by T. C. Edge
In total, our numbers almost match those of the approaching army, yet many thousands of our force is made up of the Con-Cops, soldiers who operate without fear for their lives, but who are little more than cannon fodder in the face of more powerful men.
I’ve seen before how they fight, and even with so little training have been able to dispatch large groups of them with relative ease. They give us numbers, yes, but should we be facing an army of Enhanced and hybrids, they may have little effect other than to provide distraction and to draw fire.
Still, we have to hope that our enemy have a great deal of Unenhanced with them too. Warriors, perhaps, and those used to fighting, but not all with enhancements useful for combat. Our trump card, really, is the fact that we’re here, in the city, behind tall and thick stone and metal walls, fortified and littered with gun placements and topped with guards capable of firing with a great deal of accuracy. And our weaponry, too, is far more advanced from the brief look I got at the Cure’s weapons in the woods, our men fitted with pulse rifles and armour capable of deflecting and even stopping certain rounds fired from their more antique firearms.
I have to consider that what Zander said to Cromwell was true. That without their Elementals in play, without their use of fire, we’d have defeated their forward force in the woods, and this entire, looming battle would seem a lot less foreboding.
Now, the waiting game is on. With the flames growing closer, and acting as a timer for the countdown to war, the city spends its time battening down the hatches and making itself ready. All over Outer Haven now, large units of our men patrol and lie in wait, mixtures of Nameless and City Guards, Stalkers and Con-Cops. They’re set to each gate, with vehicles ready to transport our soldiers to any point of the wall considered to be under threat.
Yet it’s the western gate and the walls around it that draw the largest and most potent force. Within the outer districts of the western quarter, several thousand men wait, our finest snipers up on the walls, our best scouts set out in the woods, relaying information back to ensure we’re not taken off guard.
My assignment has me right there next to my brother, Zander unwilling to have me anywhere but by his side. I go about the city with him, watching him work, seeing how well he leads. I’m fully aware that the soldiers of the Nameless look up to him and respect him a great deal, despite his callow years. Yet the City Guards are already doing the same, happy to take orders from the young man at such times, his authority not only ordained by the likes of Lady Orlando, and even Director Cromwell, but earned through his experience and the heroic feats he’s achieved.
With Commander Burns now freeing himself from his self-imposed watch down in the infirmary, he operates from the foyer of the City Guard HQ, stepping back to the summit of the city’s primary force of soldiers. Rycard did a fantastic job assimilating so many City Guards into our cause, but now Burns is back to manage the entire affair, with Rycard, along with other influential figures set to lead some of our units around the city.
Among them are both Magnus and Titus, the two towering Brutes heavily involved from the start when the transition took place, and the Nameless took control of Inner Haven. Both command their own troops, set over in the west among the more powerful units we have at our disposal. And Freya too, who’s done such a good helping to bolster the city’s defences, now takes up permanent position in the west, some of our better soldiers among the Nameless under her command.
My role alongside Zander isn’t a complicated one really. I am here to fight, just like everyone else, and follow orders. I don’t give them, and certainly have no authority to lead. And though my recent activities have made me somewhat notorious throughout all parts and among all groups in the city, I’m not yet in a position to command anyone other than myself. And, well, even that’s doubtful.
Instead, I support Zander as the days pass, and the tide of war sweeps inexorably towards us. For two days, we rush about the city from corner to corner, making sure things are in good working order, liaising with the various commanders who control the different units.
War councils are held where information is shared, and the latest intel of our scouts is brought to the leaders of the city’s defence. Mostly, we all gather in the western quarter where Cromwell and his people reside. An office is set up for the purposes of plotting our course, both regarding securing the city from the invaders, and breaking apart their lines.
All appear to operate on the same wavelength now. There’s little dissent or disagreement, and my grandparents appear to have put aside all of their many issues to ensure that our survival is well managed and efficiently achieved. Looking upon them, and the other commanding officers like Burns and Hatcher, as well as the thousands of hard-nosed soldiers I’ve seen all over the city, I begin to grow quite confident that the Cure are about to bite off more than they can chew.
Sure, they can set a wall of flame to the woods, and force us to withdraw. But here, locked outside the city with no way in? I can only imagine that they’ll break against the wall likes waves on rock if they really try to breach our defences.
It seems that my grandfather has indeed been quietly preparing for the possibility of defending the city for some time. I do recall, as a young girl, how the walls were built higher back then, the gates thicker. Even now, all the gun placements being fixed and attached have been manufactured for the very specific task of warding off a threat. His foresight may just prove the very thing that saves us.
And so the days go, with the nights bringing me back to my personal haven up on level 2 of the City Guard HQ. And each night, Adryan comes to stay with me, our bodies wrapped tight and warm, with a growing feeling of safety and security starting to burgeon inside me.
I lie with him and we share so few words, our waking hours long and arduous to the point where we wish those we spend together to be silent and still. It is a silence of comfort, though, with Adryan. He’s become someone with whom no words are needed to ward of any awkwardness. I can lie there and look at his face, handsome and smooth, yet creased now with the worries and minor scars inflicted by these terrible days, and merely enjoy the moment without the need to draw my voice to the room.
We share time in a period of our lives when it is in such short supply. And at any point, we know he might be summoned to my grandmother’s side, or I might by summoned to my brother’s. Or perhaps both of us, summoned from slumber by the drums of war, Adryan acting the intelligence officer, coordinating troop movements, me the soldier, down on the ground doing the killing.
We have such different vantages of this war, and come from such different backgrounds. And yet here, we lie together and try to press it all away to the backs of our minds. Here, in this room, during these dark days, Adryan is the light that shines.
14
Two days after the fight at the edge of the woods, the flames still rise high. They’re close now, close enough to be seen from Outer Haven at high enough vantage points, the woods being swiftly eaten away with nothing but black ash left behind.
Way back from the wall, I gather with the leaders of the city’s defence in the office assigned for the war council. The last couple of days have seen regular meetings take place, but until now we’ve had little to go on regarding enemy troop movements, except the fact that the main army has now crossed the plains and is about to begin its long trek across the scorched, blackened earth.
According to our scouts, the Cure have up until this point been moving as a single mass, aside from the advance force sent ahead to clear the woods. Now, though, it appears as though they’re breaking up.
“I’ve had a couple of reports that smaller contingents of the enemy have been heading southeast and northeast from the main army,” Colonel Hatcher informs us, the information provided by some of his more evasive and elusive Stalker scouts. “It appears that they’re getting ready to assault the city from various angles.”
“Not surprising at all,” says Zander, growing into his role and a regular
contributor in such meetings. “To attack from a single angle would have been easier to defend. They must know this.”
“There is more troubling news than that,” continues Hatcher. “I have lost contact with a couple of other scouts, and that can only mean one thing.”
“They’re dead,” grunts Freya, stating the obvious.
“Worse,” says Hatcher, looking around the room. “They will likely have been caught and therefore had their minds excavated. It will present the enemy with greater knowledge of our fortifications and weak points.”
“Then we fortify them further,” suggests Freya, expert in such things as she is.
Cromwell’s voice enters the room before Hatcher can speak. It draws a hush as always.
“We have little time for that,” he says. “It may be that the Cure wish for us to spread our resources more thinly. It could be a bluff.”
“Bluff or not, do we have a choice?” asks Lady Orlando with her usual calm. “We can hardly allow for weak points in the wall to be found and exploited.”
“We won’t, Cornelia. Of course we won’t. We have plenty of units capable of reaching any weak point within minutes. We have to keep our eye on the main army and not let our attention be too heavily split. If an attack comes elsewhere, we react. But I don’t see how we have time to do much to the more vulnerable areas around the city.”
A little more debate ensues on the matter, the issue more contentious than other points of recent discussion. Irritatingly, I actually find myself agreeing with my grandfather, his logic seeming to strike a chord with me.
In fact, this entire situation irritates me when I let myself think about it. Sure, it’s great we’re collaborating so well, and all over the city, the various military units on our side and theirs are working together very efficiently according to reports and what I’ve seen with my own eyes. But…something about that just feels off to me. It’s worrying, mostly because it might well serve as a picture of the future.
Is this it from now on? If the city survives, are the remains of Cromwell’s world and the burgeoning embers of our own going to merge more permanently? Already, my grandfather has all his Stalkers, Con-Cops, and loyal City Guards spread all over the city. It makes me uneasy knowing that he’s planted himself here in Outer Haven so soon after being shoved out.
I brought the exact concern to my grandmother the previous day, only for her to tell me she has things in hand, and won’t trust Cromwell for a second. But, actions speak louder than words, and I’m beginning to get the feeling that, under the shadow of this incoming army, the city is starting to soften to Cromwell once more, despite everything he’s done.
At the end of the day, they’re all just delighted to have the support of his Stalkers and other loyal soldiers. Such a situation is a dangerous one, as far as I see it. Others may let their guard down, but not me.
Not me…
The conversation moves on at a brisk pace, various opinions voiced before a conclusion is drawn and decision made. Lady Orlando may currently be the figure in the city with the most authority, but she is sensible enough to seek advice and, if needs be, defer to those with greater wisdom on matters of urban defence. It turns out, Director Cromwell is well versed in such things, given his many decades within the City Guard and, latterly, as supreme ruler of Haven.
As such, she’s put in the rather unenviable position of having to listen to him, despite wishing to prevent him having too much influence. In the end, she has little choice but to trust that he knows what he’s talking about, and try to ignore the niggling feeling that he has some secret agenda to further his own cause.
Thankfully, however, we have our own man with similar knowledge of managing the City Guard. While Cromwell was once Commander some time ago, that role now sits with Leyton Burns. Lady Orlando, therefore, is able to seek advice from him on the matter too, knowing he has the city’s best interests at heart.
In the end, the general feeling drawn from both men is that the city’s current defensive structure is optimal. We have many units capable of moving quickly from place to place, and have ensured that the west is most heavily guarded. All possible secret routes have been booby-trapped, with the majority of the tunnels once used by the Nameless beneath the city already collapsed during our civil war. There are some left, of course, that will enable us to sneak out to sabotage the enemy, or engage in sneak attacks and ambushes if we need to, but they are both guarded and set with failsafes and explosives to ensure they cannot be used by the enemy to enter, even if they were to discover them.
Overall, the city is currently considered watertight, and the main thing to worry about is a breach in the walls or one of the gates. That, of course, is the concern – right now, we don’t exactly know what capabilities the enemy has in that regard.
“They’ll likely have explosive weaponry,” suggests Colonel Hatcher. “The weapons they fought with in the woods were old and far less potent than what we possess. However, they didn’t enter the woods with the aim of blowing it up, so we have to assume that those in the main army have weapons capable of damaging the walls.”
“What sort of weapons are you talking about?” questions Lady Orlando.
“Heavy ballistics, such as grenade launchers, rocket launchers, and possibly larger, fixed position weapons with far greater capabilities. These sorts of weapons were readily available in the old world. There’s no reason to think they won’t have scavenged such armaments in their travels.”
“And what sort of countermeasures do we have for such weapons?” Lady Orlando looks to Freya with the question.
“Our guns should have a much greater range,” comes her deep, husky voice. “We can target anyone with more powerful arms…”
“And if they fire first?” cuts in Cromwell.
Freya doesn’t seem to have an answer. Zander does.
“A good sniper should be able to shoot certain rocket propelled explosives from the air, exploding them before they hit the walls. Any gifted Dasher and Hawk hybrid is quite capable of that.”
I think of one such hybrid, Astor, who I first met when he was acting bodyguard to Walter, the Nameless’ resident chemist and drug-maker. Not so long ago I saw him shoot a whole set of drones from the sky with incredible speed and precision. I’ve no doubt that soldiers and snipers such as him will be able to shoot rockets from the air, even if our mobile gun placements can’t.
“The problem, again,” says Hatcher, “is numbers. “Other than the overall size of their army, we have so little to go on regarding the sorts of arms they’re carrying, and just how many hybrids or Enhanced they have. Most of what we’re discussing here is speculation. All we can really do is set the defence of this city. That is on our end, and under our control. What they can do, and the arms they have, isn’t yet known to us. And we may not find out until they arrive.”
His words are somewhat sobering and entirely accurate. Colonel Hatcher is a man who doesn’t mince words or beat around the bush. He is, against all expectation, a man I’d happily follow to battle. It’s so odd for me to think that, given his role within my grandfather’s system, but Hatcher really doesn’t seem so bad at all.
“Colonel Hatcher is right,” says Cromwell. “We have no choice now but to wait. Preparations have been made. I commend you all for the parts you’ve played so far, but the true test is yet to come.”
His words suggest this latest meeting is set to conclude. Always, the Director seeks to have the final word, and always Lady Orlando refuses to give it to him. It seems she has a chronic inability to give him any measure of his old authority here, an authority that she now possesses.
“And negotiation?” she asks suddenly, just as people prepare to move off. “I’ve been giving the option some further thought. What harm is there in sending an envoy to find out just what they want?”
“Harm?” huffs Cromwell, eyes tilting into a frown I take for mocking. “The harm, dear Cornelia, will be done to whatever poor soul you choose to send. Th
ey will be killed, of course. But worse for us all, their minds will be examined for information first. There is nothing to be achieved from doing such a thing.”
Lady Orlando’s eyes are already moving elsewhere as he speaks, seeking out someone whose opinion she has more faith in. They start on Commander Burns, whose sharp mind is back to full fitness and ready to give the matter all due consideration.
“It does seem to me, by looking at the evidence, that we are facing an army with no desire other than our destruction.” Cromwell seems pleased with the endorsement, before Burns continues. “However, diplomacy can’t be discounted either. It is logical, after all, to consider all ends.”
“Not so in this case, Leyton,” counters Cromwell. “Didn’t young Zander discover this army’s true purpose within the mind of this messenger sent to the Fangs? Did he not confirm what I already knew – that they are barbarians who have no desire to build, but only seek to destroy? These people are at odds with our way of life here.”
“Don’t speak of our way of life, Artemis, as if we’re all on the same page,” bites Lady Orlando. “You wish only to see the Savants flourish. You care nothing for anyone else. Your world is as much about destruction as the Cure…”
“A simple and rather insipid way of putting it, Cornelia. And in any case, my plans have been forced to change. I assure you, negotiating with these people is a waste of time. There is no point in sending anyone to their death.”
Once more, my grandmother shows total contempt for her old husband by turning her eyes to Zander as he speaks. Entranced by the discussion though I am, I still manage a smirk at the look of displeasure in Cromwell’s eye.
“Zander, tell us again what you saw in this man’s mind?” she says.
My brother’s eyes dart swiftly between the arguing parties before he begins.