The legionnaires on the bridge nearest to him looked at him as though he were mad. Recalling his order, he couldn’t blame them, but he bellowed at them to carry it out and they dutifully obeyed despite their beliefs that he had gone insane.
The enemy craft took the bait, bringing itself around to strike at the Luminon with a full broadside. Orion had allowed for this, knowing that the captain of the Nighthunter would catch onto the opportunity he was giving them. The stupidity of the Oblivion vessel was such that it brought itself into Orion’s trap thinking that it had found an easy target. Instead, this ignorance only served to cloud its crew from noticing the quiet, sleeker Guardian ship behind them.
With the Oblivion’s engines exposed to the Nighthunter, she fired her main cannons. Orion winced as the Luminon took hit after hit, enduring the necessary barrage while its sister immobilised the enemy in a few key strikes.
“Scans report one engine destroyed” Felix announced a few moments later.
Orion gave no reply, focussed as he was on his throne and adjusting key systems of the ship to keep her stable. The whole time he had to keep an eye on the rest of the fleet to make sure they weren’t on the losing side. He panned the hologram controls to present the Guardian destroyers mopping up the first group of Phantom ships. He allowed himself a little satisfaction to see that they had already finished the job and were now joining with the Blackstars’ counterattack against the Oblivions. He had no certain idea where the carriers, frigates and other ships of the fleet were, but a quick check to his throne’s right armrest showed the radar was still packed healthy with friendly blips.
Then something caught the corner of his eye at the podium. The enemy was starting to disengage. “Captain, they seem to be withdrawing…” Zeno said in disbelief.
They were right to be surprised, Orion thought, because the Oblivion class was capable of withstanding so much more than they had endured so far. It was only because of the speed and discipline of the Guardians that another Blackstar hadn’t been obliterated yet.
“This isn’t right…” Orion murmured. “Phantoms don’t retreat; they fight to the end like cornered dogs”.
“They’re outnumbered and outgunned with our destroyers moving in. They have to withdraw, even the Phantoms are wise to that” someone suggested, but he had no mind to see who. The looks the man’s fellow officers gave him silenced his optimism.
“No…it’s never that simple” Valerian answered for them all. He had come to the bridge from the Primary Tactical Hall where he had been using the chamber’s equipment to survey the battlefield on Pheia down below.
Valerian didn’t stop to witness the rare sight of the Phantom’s flight, the importance of the news he bore overwhelming any desire to witness the enemy seemingly flee. He turned to the captain. “Something big is about to happen down there, Orion. The instruments are going insane trying to work out what’s down there. I’ve never seen anything like it; whatever it is, it’s not good.”
“What are you saying exactly, Valerian? That our biggest victory since Colossi is nothing but a ruse?”
The recon master answered with a cool, level-headed voice. It made his words all the more serious. “Captain, get me a link to the commander. Now. We have to warn them, all of them. They have to get off that planet before they can find out what the enemy has done; if they wait to see, it will be too late for any of them to come back alive”.
LUPUS RAN THE length of the chasm for a mile either way, joining up with Gaia and Nightingale when he came to the flanks to investigate the gorge. Both agreed that the gap was too large to cross with any quick means, the former confessing that even with her powers she could not manipulate a strong enough bridge for them to get over safely in any great numbers.
We have to cross…Lupus insisted. He was back at the central thrust with Calla and Phoenix who had brought their legions up in full support and paced back and forth in obvious agitation. Sabre approached, hesitant at first to disturb the Apostle.
“Brother, you have to calm down…” Phoenix told him, trying to give her voice a tone of softness that didn’t sound belittling. Lupus growled back at her in response and she decided not to say anything else. Her understanding spoke more of a close friendship that was years old than the reality of their recent meeting, but that escaped his notice.
Calla, more comfortable in her human form since coming to the fore, saw Sabre standing near them more unwilling than before to bring his news to the Lion after the way he reacted to his sister Apostle. “Speak your mind, Commander” she smiled at him, warmly enough to melt his reluctance.
He didn’t smile back but met her eyes with his in a gesture that was more or less as grateful. “My Apostles,” he addressed all three of them, not knowing whether he would get a response from the Lion who seemed to be too distracted with the chasm to listen. “Recon Master Valerian of the Luminon has detected a fathomless peril beyond the defile…”
Peril? Can you be any more elaborate for us, old friend? The Lion seemed to hear him after all.
Truthfully, Sabre wasn’t sure he could be. “…He warns that the energy signatures coming from the humans have changed. They don’t register as anything to him now; to put it as he said, they are completely unknown”.
“What of the enemy fleet?” Phoenix thought to ask, quicker than the others to suspect something would be amiss in orbit too.
Sabre expected to be asked about that and he had no shyness of answering the fiery Apostle. “Captain Orion relays that the Phantom fleet is in full withdrawal…he asks that we consider falling back until we can determine what Valerian has found”.
Fall back? Lupus replied, glaring at Sabre. Would Orion have us forget our honour so quickly at the hint of danger? We do not retreat when there is something to still fight for!
Sabre had nothing to say in return, embarrassed by the message he had to give when they weren’t even his own words. He agreed with his liege, not the captain, but he didn’t think it wise to voice his defence at that moment. He trusted the Recon Master and captain completely, and though he couldn’t condone a retreat, he knew they would not be so bold without due reason. His sense of duty conflicted with his understanding of men he had fought and bled with from the very beginning of the war.
Even so, it was to his Apostle that he owed his loyalty above all else.
“Lupus, we have to consider this…” Calla said carefully. Two massive, fearsome eyes stared back at her in such a way that told her that even she was treading on thin ice.
No, there is no debate to be had here, he replied. We stay until we find the survivors; no sooner, no later.
“Sooner it is, then” Phoenix answered back, her gaze fixed on something on the other side of the city.
Sabre couldn’t believe what he was seeing but someone, a human it looked to be, was climbing out of a sewer cover in the street opposite them on the other side of the chasm. An old greying man, near the end of his natural life given his treacherous gait, slowly approached the chasm with something clasped tightly in his shaking, spotted hands.
“Hold your fire…” Sabre breathed, his order picked up by the comms-device in his ear and transmitting across to the legion. From the silence across the Guardian gun line, he knew the other commanders had issued the same command.
Lupus could see what the old man held more clearly than the legionnaire, but he couldn’t name it. It was a spherical device, perhaps some kind of peace offering to make them aware of the humans’ surrender even though they weren’t the enemy.
As the man came closer, Lupus saw more of its detail. It was some kind of obsidian orb, crackling with an ethereal energy that both transfixed him and urged him to run. He realised shamefully that whatever the distorting, maleficent thing was, Valerian and Orion were right to warn them away. He had been a fool not to listen.
He noticed Gaia and Nightingale had joined them, not through an ability to turn his engrossed eyes but through their familiar smell. Word of the human’s appe
arance had spread to them through their legions he surmised, but wished with all his heart that they hadn’t come to witness what the old man had brought them. “What is that thing?” Gaia hissed in discomfort at the sight of it.
As the human reached the edge, Sabre realised that his hands weren’t trembling with age, but with a dread so profound no single word could do it justice. When he saw what was carried in those soft, innocent palms, he staggered back with the same terror that possessed the elder.
Only the realisation of what would happen next allowed Sabre to overcome his sheer fright. He threw a hand to his wrist to open communications to all legions on the field and spoke with utter clarity; he couldn’t allow any room for doubt in his voice. “All legions, withdraw. I repeat, fall back to the fleet immediately. This command is irrevocable”. The urgency of his message battled with his intention to speak quietly, wary as he was of setting off the device.
Calla was the first to turn and question him. “What are you doing, Commander?” she demanded, but not much louder than he had been.
When she saw the horrified look on his face, she could tell he knew what it was. The strange man across from them had by now started to teeter on the edge of the chasm, as though he too knew what he was about to do. Falling down there won’t help us, Sabre wanted to tell him. The man had closed his eyes and seemed to be muttering something, a prayer perhaps. That won’t help either!
Sabre, explain this Lupus demanded as the legions serving the other Apostles searched for verification of Sabre’s order to retreat.
The commander’s expression was distant and distracted as though his mind sought to deny what his eyes were showing him. “It’s a Hollow Bomb my Lord. It’s the end of us…” he finally muttered, a mix of hopelessness and contempt in his voice.
The Apostles looked at him in dismay, but he couldn’t help explaining just how deep they were in it. On this day, with death made certain for them all, panic got the better of him. “It’s going to create a singularity field” he said. “The whole planet is going to collapse!”
The Apostles had no time to consider a prevention measure, because they knew there wasn’t any. They reacted to Sabre’s doomsday forecast instantly, commanding their legions to fall back to the Stormfalcons and Ironwroughts without rank or order. With one last look at the old man, Lupus wondered with a pain in his heart if they ever stood a chance of saving the humans that had been spared to ensnare them.
How much time do we have? He asked, snapping his head round to Sabre who remained at his side.
“Impossible to say, my Lord…” Sabre confessed. He had only known of such a weapon being used once and that was the last resort of an exhausted goddess out of options. It was the same thing that brought Colossi and the war to this Dimension. It was an abomination.
Lupus looked back over the gorge where a group of other humans were beginning to gather around the old man. Their faces were ridden with sorrow, both for themselves and for the legionnaires who had come to save them in vain. Tears rolled down their cheeks in messy rivulets as they reached out with their hands, desperate for the Guardians to find a way to help them. Their eyes seemed to beg their would-be-saviours for forgiveness.
Then it struck him. The most awful truth that almost made him vomit from the pain it dealt. The chasm was never designed to prevent the legions saving Pheia; it was there to make them see the last of the world’s own people bring its end. The realisation broke his heart.
“We can’t save them, my Lord…” Sabre urged, desperate to get away and escape the Phantoms’ sadistic trap.
Fighting back his raging emotions, Lupus made himself turn away, though his conscience could barely reconcile his need to do so. It is no longer them who need saving, Sabre, he said, trying to reassure himself as well as the commander. What they do now they remain innocent in doing and their souls remain pure. It is our own souls that are in danger now…
He ran to Calla. She had already retaken form so she could make it to the transports in time, though the likelihood of that for any of them was indeterminable. He pawed the ground at her side, his claws gouging thick grooves into the tarmac of the road. It was a gesture that she understood as naturally as the written word; “Today we have to run, but tomorrow we fight”.
The other Apostles joined them, each in their own form to give them the only sense of power and control they had left to them. They had no solutions to this problem, no ability to prevent the imminent doom of the world they were meant to save. Looking to each other with mixed expressions, side by side with their legions at their back, they fled from the city, leaving the crying humans behind to die.
Chapter 12
THEY RAN, FASTER than they ever had before and quicker than they ever would again. There was no way to save this world, no back-up plan that could win them this battle, because it wasn’t a conflict they could fight anymore. Despite the hopelessness of the situation, that it was beyond any of their powers to change, there was nothing to prevent the flood of indignation and shame they felt at what they were doing.
The battle outside the city raged on regardless of what was about to happen. The Guardians were in a staggered retreat, but the Phantoms had nowhere to run and no desire to flee; their only wish was to slaughter the herds of sheep before them even if that meant ensuring their own doom. As Lupus and the other Apostles re-joined the legions at the city gates, he was proud despite his guilt that the Guardians were able to withdraw with discipline. As much as he loved and respected his birth race, he suspected that had the armies been human, they would have fled in terror. The legions, however, had managed to control their fear and cover their retreat to prevent the massacre the Phantoms hoped to enjoy.
Armour units covered the flight of the legionnaires as flocks of Stormfalcons rose from the cover of the desert valley to evacuate them to the safety of the fleet above. In orbit, the Phantom ships jumped away from the world in surprising antithesis to the enemy on the ground; evidently, the Oblivion vessels were too precious to risk staying, even for the thrill of war and death, when the Hollow Bomb was activated. The Blackstars had no choice but to avoid pursuit of them, the importance of the legions’ security far greater than chasing after three enemy ships.
Lupus saw with some satisfaction that the legions had defeated the majority of the enemy forces at the city wall, the vastly superior discipline of the Warhound units outmatching the devastation that the Phantom tanks were dealing out in return. Steel Idols littered the floor in various parts, distorted and made even more horrific by the imaginative ways by which they were destroyed. There were several dozen burning husks of Warhound tanks, but he was content to count far less of them than of the enemy’s counterparts.
Speeding past the walls, a haunting sensation curling its way through his mane to his heart, he saw the true wreckage of the battle. Thousands of paradigms lay dead on the ground, their grey, ghostly blood staining the once-smooth beige of the desert sand. Where they clashed with the legions’ lines, another, more vibrant blood blended with the enemy’s. The ocean of red was sickening to behold, the foulness of its smell rivalling the atrocity of its sight.
It had been a costly fight and as he witnessed the plethora of bodies strewn across the ground in various states of fleshy destruction, he felt a weight sink inside him. He could feel their deaths, sense the change in the remaining life energy of the legions. What struck Lupus the most as he raced through the battlefield, never stopping to mourn, never pausing to weep even though his conscience begged him to with weapons fire filling the air around him, was not how many legionnaires had been lost, but that they had been lost for nothing.
His brother Oz had joined his side. As the last of the legions inside the city had returned, he pulled his own forces back to the forest of Stormfalcons waiting to take them away from this hell. “Don’t think it brother, they died honourably” Oz told him as they reached the transports, seeing the pain on his face. Despite his brother’s sincerity, Lupus could tell they must h
ave all been thinking the same thing if his brother could pinpoint his feelings so well.
With news relayed from legion to legion, Oz and the others had ordered the tactical withdrawal and already scores of transports were lifting into the air overladen with troops. The armour legions were the last to fall back, their firepower formidable enough to slow and stall the enemies that chased after them.
“We all feel the same,” Oz continued on his side. “You couldn’t have known what was going to happen”.
By now the others had gathered round them, some issuing commands to their legions to form a defensive perimeter around the Stormfalcons, others watching him with expressions he couldn’t read. Oz may have been understanding of his folly, but as for his other brothers and sisters, he could not say.
Lupus watched Oz change back to his human form as he climbed the ramp of the nearest transport, wondering how he couldn’t have anticipated the enemy’s trap. Climbing aboard and transforming himself with every step into the defeated man he felt like, he held out a hand to help his kin. Nearest to him Gaia took it gratefully, visibly out of breath and exhausted from the fight, and stepped up into the passenger cabin.
She couldn’t bring herself to turn and look back at the world they had failed to save, but the sound of a dozen deep impacts on the ground behind her and the tremors rattling the ship forced her to do so. Her mouth dropped in disbelief as she beheld what was causing the quakes.
As Lupus and the others turned to see what she found so distressing, thinking the shockwaves were the result of new enemy artillery, they were just as dismayed as her. Several dozen Warhounds were being obliterated as they watched in dread. Gargantuan halberds, axes and swords gutted the insides and clove the crews into pieces. Other tanks were simply crushed wholly by the enormous feet of the Phantom creatures now standing taller than everything else on the battlefield. They even dwarfed Cerberus, who was the most defiant of them all to leave before the legions had escaped.
The Deian War: Vermillion's Apostles Page 38