by T. C. Edge
All over the city now, we’re bracing for an imminent attack. It could come at any time and from anywhere. We might be right in the thick of the action here, with a thousand men just outside the gate. Or we could be as far from it as possible, the northern gate about to be besieged.
All we have are the drones sent out now to give some warning. Operating in silent mode, they slip from the tops of the walls, drift down low to the ground, and begin hovering through the smoky air, spreading out from the perimeter in a bid to find our enemy.
Marching into the control room beside the southern gate, we find a set of monitors set up, soldiers watching the feed from the security cameras on the drones, once used to keep a watch over the Unenhanced in Outer Haven, and now retrofitted for war.
Dozens of them move off, their lights doused and shut off, yet their little motors unable to be quietened. Most Bats would hear them coming a mile off, but perhaps with this endless wailing from beyond our borders, our enemy won’t hear them approach.
The monitors show little more than black. Thick smoke hovers above the ground, obscuring all sight any further than a half dozen metres from the drones. Another monitor has each of them positioned on a map, little red dots to denote their positions as they buzz away into the murky night, seeking out their prey.
They move twenty metres from the wall, forty, sixty, and find nothing but the burnt embers of the forest, still breathing heavy fumes to the sky. The tension, as we watch, is almost unbearable. Soon, the drones are spreading over a hundred metres from the perimeter and have found and seen nothing.
They go another hundred metres, and still nothing. The soldiers begin to wonder whether the attack is set to happen here.
Then, suddenly, a radio bursts to life, and voices clatter down the line. It has us jumping as we lose focus on the monitors, and hear our allies over in the north calling out that an attack is imminent.
“Soldiers spotted,” crackles the voice over the endless din. “Hundreds of them…approaching fast…guns ready to fire…”
Across the city, several loud booms rumble, and a split second later we hear them on the radio, sending blasts of static our way. Then gunfire, crackling, spitting, several miles from here. But not just at the northern gate. We hear it further west as well, and then not far from where we stand.
Our eyes are drawn back to the monitor by a soldier.
“Sir! Zander!” he calls out.
We look again, and see that several of the drones are going dark. One after another, the camera feeds are cut off, monitor after monitor cutting to black. And as they do, the little red lights on the map disappear. One by one, they go out.
Two hundred metres from the wall, all the way along the perimeter of the south, the drones are taken out. Without delay, Zander orders for the guns to fire at the drones’ last positions.
“Fire now,” he shouts, pointing at the map as the red lights fade. “Fire!
He rushes outside, and I follow. We dash to the top of the wall just as the booming guns go off, joining the various others now defending the city from a multi-pronged assault. I see the shells spread and the balls of energy fizz, lighting up the world, hitting the earth two hundred metres out.
And this time, I don’t just see a mass of shapes beyond, just out of reach.
I see them rushing forward, firing as they go. Hundreds of them, peppering us, not just with regular rounds, but fizzing explosives too. Zander grabs me and drags me down, and the shields and battlements at the summit of the wall start to rattle and pop as a thousand bullets come calling.
And lower down, rumbles shake the foundations as explosives hit the stone and brick, biting off chunks, eating their way through the structure that keeps the city safe.
The wall that has, for so long, stood tall and kept the outside world at bay. But now, that outside world has gathered. That outside world has brought the fight to us.
18
Atop the wall, we fire blindly, hidden away in safety behind the thick protective shields. A hundred pulse rifles, manning the southern gate and the walls either side, split out into the night and give frame to the world. And the larger guns shout out loud, turning the lands just beyond our borders into a cauldron of fire and death.
But the enemy remain unseen, hidden amidst the smog. They appear in flashes when our guns hunt them down, but disappear just as fast. Then more flashes light up the night, and I see bodies in the dirt. Not many, but some. Perhaps attacking here was foolish after all.
The attack doesn’t last long, however. The sudden barrage of bullets from the Cure, and the fizzing explosive missiles that crunch into the walls, do little more than superficial damage. Our Hawks and snipers, thought to be able to shoot the bombs down, see them too late as they emerge from the shroud. Some fire them from the sky, but most hit their mark. But, unexpectedly, their effect seems to be minimal.
It appears the walls are too sturdily built, too strong for such weaponry, scavenged from the old world and unable to compete with the new. The enemy seem to realise it, their sudden attack fading almost as fast as it began.
All over the city, the same appears to happen. Not just here, but in the west and north too, a lull seems to drop. And the east, as yet unattacked if my ears don’t deceive me, the enemy yet to venture that far.
A quiet falls, and I feel the blood pump harder in my ears. Then Zander whispers.
“They’re testing the defences,” he says. “We need to be ready to displace…”
He moves straight off, down behind the gate, and I follow. Into the control room we go, and he says the same to the men on the radios.
“We’re too strong here,” he says. “They’re going to attack elsewhere. Inform Commander Burns and Colonel Hatcher.”
The technician nods.
“Sir, they’ve already called in. They said the same.”
“Good. Then we’re on the same wavelength.”
We head back outside, the space behind the gate filled with a vast collection of vehicles, both military and civilian, ready to take our soldiers wherever they need to go.
The call comes quickly. To the south of the gate, a sudden burst of noise lifts once more. I see, in the distance, a shroud of yellow and orange begin to burn in the mist, and know that the wall is being besieged. A couple of booming shots fire from guns fixed in the area, though our defences there are weaker. We jump into a vehicle, and speed along the road along with several other mobile units. By the time we arrive, however, the fighting has once more ceased.
For the next hour, the same thing occurs again and again. Every few minutes, a new bout of fighting fills the air from various corners of the city, the perimeter being continually tested, stretching our defences. We lose men atop the walls, but only a few, and for the most part the ramparts hold firm, weakened in places but not enough to cause a breach.
And all the while, that wailing noise continues to batter our ears, a constant burden, and the smoke continues to seep up our noses and tickle our eyes, forcing many to pull on their gas masks in response.
We rush about, moving east and west along the southern perimeter of the city, rarely arriving in time to make a difference. It is a game of cat and mouse, and the Cure are the former. Toying with us, testing us, they never attack for long. Sniping in and out, they nibble and bite at our extremities, drawing blood from minor wounds but never going for the killing stroke.
I would take it for a botched siege, but I know it’s nothing of the sort. This is a plan of theirs, a very specific strategy. They have neutralised our Enhanced, our ability to see and hear and smell them coming. Now they know just where our defences are strongest, and have begun the process of weakening the walls, and tiring our soldiers.
With the constant wailing, and the debilitating smoke, our men will start to suffer. The Cure know this. They have designed this. This is not a botched siege at all, but a strategy to weaken us, exhaust us, pull us left and right and wait for the perfect time to strike.
I do
ubt they’ve ever attacked a city like this before. Though my eyes have been opened to what else exists out there, I’m certain there’s no place quite like Haven. Yet they clearly know how to destroy and pillage. It is their life’s work, their profession. And this is their career defining moment.
The night is long, longer perhaps than any I’ve ever endured. It drains us all, both physically and emotionally, the constant exertions of wondering when the next attack will come, rushing about should a breach occur, serving to bleed us dry of what energy we have.
We lose men, shot from the ramparts or caught in explosions, but must surely take more. Each time I find myself moving to the summit and looking out beyond the city, I see bodies in the dirt, and begin to think that they must be little more than cannon fodder, expendables, send ahead to test us, perhaps draw us into a false sense of security.
I have little doubt that their more gifted soldiers are waiting in the wings, ready to pour forward when the time comes. And though it may appear as though our defence is holding easily, and we’re slowly wiping out their threat, I’m certain the truth is very different.
Morning fails to bring the usual illumination you’d expect. As dawn begins to rise, and the sun climbs, little light penetrates the shroud. The only real change is that the smoke and murk takes on a different shade, turning to a brighter grey from a colourless black. But it remains no less impenetrable, our vision still dulled by it, our eyes unable to work through it.
And I begin to consider that, perhaps, I was right before. That the Cure have people capable of holding the shroud in place, keeping the city stifled by it, caught within its grip.
Are they out there right now, their Elementals, pressing the air into the city, forcing the smoke to sit firm? Do they have them set around our flanks, surrounding us, creating this trap from which we cannot escape?
As the bouts of fighting take a hiatus during the early morning, I ask Zander that very thing. He doesn’t have an answer for me, but seems to agree it could be the case.
“Then we should get out there,” I tell him. “Form strike teams…use this fog against them. If we can’t see them, then they won’t be able to see us either. We can use it to our advantage.”
“I don’t know, Brie,” he says wearily as we stand in the control room beside the southern gate, soldiers still rushing about around us. “We have no real idea of what’s going on out there. It’s too dangerous.”
I grimace, my head pounding hard from the constant noise.
“I swear, Zander, I’d go out there myself to try to destroy whatever damn machine is making that bloody sound! I can’t stand it anymore. We should get out there and blow them up if nothing else…”
“Trust me, the thought’s gone through my mind several times already. But I reckon that’s exactly what they want. It’s a lure, sis. They want us to go and sabotage these machines so they can take us down when we’re out there and vulnerable. We’ve got to think several steps ahead of them.”
“Or maybe you’re just giving them too much credit,” I say, not believing my own words.
“After what they’ve done, I think they deserve the credit. We can’t underestimate them. We can’t leave the city walls.”
He puts to bed my fledgling plan, basic and poorly thought out as it was. I’d actually thought a little bit further ahead; my idea would be grab some of their corpses from beyond the wall, dress up as them, and then sneak out in disguise. We could then take out their damn sonic machines, and maybe find out if they do have some Elementals keeping this smog among the streets.
A simple plan, and probably a desperate one based off of a lack of sleep, piercing headache, and growing fear that we’re just sitting ducks here. We have to be proactive. We have to strike back. We can’t, as far as I see it, just wait here as they pepper our walls and try to break down our doors. Eventually, they will. And when that happens…who knows.
In fact, part of me is looking forward to that very thing. As soon as they crack the egg, the yolk will have no choice but to come oozing out. We will need to fight them head on, battle them man for man. They’ll head straight for the breach and will come surging through the bottleneck. It might just be a good chance to kill some of the bastards as they try to get in.
With the morning now in full flow, I get no chance to sleep or rest. None of us do. We have to stay vigilant, always forced to go to where the fighting seems most vicious, to the points of the wall thought most at threat.
They don’t let up. They don’t let us rest. They come, again and again, in waves, attacking and retreating, then attacking somewhere else. All over the wall now, from the north to south and west to east, at least five to ten small skirmishes are constantly at play. And while they’re able to retreat and pass the baton onto another of their units, we have no choice but to stay alert to stay alive.
Slowly but surely, they’re seeking to wear us down.
19
It isn’t until mid-afternoon that I finally give in. Zander realises that I’m out on my feet and orders for me to rest.
“We’ve got it in order,” he says. “Move back from the front line for a few hours. There’s nothing to suggest they’re going to break through for a while yet.”
I feign some argument until I realise I don’t even have the energy for that. Leaving Zander near the southern gate where he’s running the show, I head back to the inner districts to a place I know quite well. Not far, in fact, from the very place where my part in all this started.
A little north of here, the once vibrant square of Culture Corner sits, lonely and abandoned, forgotten at this time of war. That terrorist attack by the Fanatics set me on this path, and how quickly I’ve travelled it to where I am now.
But it’s not to Culture Corner that I go, but a cream building with fancy balconies and a wonderful array of colourful and sweet-smelling flowers adoring its façade. Only, that’s how it once looked at least.
Now, the training school for girls seeking to ‘marry up’ to Inner Haven is a shadow of its former self. It doesn’t lie in ruin like so many buildings in nearby streets, and doesn’t appear to have suffered much in the way of structural damage. Yet the flowers are dead, and the balconies are covered in soot, and the outside isn’t cream anymore and bathed in warm sunshine, but hidden in the murk of smoke that swallows the entire city.
I came here once, and marvelled at the place’s opulence. Now, I merely take it for the refuge it has become, a place now housing the several hundred Fangs who fled here from the woods. And outside, guarding the doors and ever watchful, I see several of their hunters now, cloaked within the shroud and waiting for their chance to fight.
I step out of the car, brought here by a soldier who will now quickly return to the gate, and approach to find that one of the guards is, in fact, West. He takes a moment to recognise me before forgetting himself and stepping towards me energetically.
“Brie...what are you doing here?!” he asks.
The other few hunters drape an eye over him, still unused to hearing him speak. It appears that scene back in the central hut of their village, when he confronted and killed the envoy, has cast his muteness aside. In these final few days of life, he must feel it’s time to say his piece.
“I came to check up on you all,” I say. “And…to get some rest.”
“Yes, of course. You look tired. Come, come, follow me.”
I smile at the other guards, a couple of whom I recognise, and step into the building. The interior isn’t how I remember it either. It has a coating of mud and filth that has clearly been traipsed in by the Fangs, wandering in and out from the streets and bringing the grime with them. The air is cleaner than outside, but still stuffy and smoky, and there’s a constant hum of voices and movement coming from all corners.
Just peeking through a few doors, I can see that all available space is taken. The Fangs huddle together, most likely hating being inside such a structure, and wondering just why they’re here when the city is under bombar
dment. Perhaps they’d have been better heading north to the Roosters after all, or else migrating away from these lands for good.
That chance has gone now. They’re part of this just like the rest of us.
As West leads me through the hall, I hear a familiar voice. While the sweet smell of flowers may be absent, that of Sophie’s voice still remains. Exiting from a room, she hustles her way past us before realising it’s me. Then she turns, shakes her head to herself, and snatches me into an embrace.
“Oh Brie, you look a fright. What are you doing here? How is the defence going? Have you seen much of Rycard?”
The questions flow, as expected. I assume that, back here away from the fighting, Sophie and the Fangs are being kept largely out of the loop.
I answer the most important query first.
“Rycard’s fine, Soph,” I say. “He’s over by the western gate last I heard, helping out Commander Burns.”
“Oh…the western gate?” she asks, eyes narrowing in worry. “Isn’t that where most of the fighting is?”
“Um, I’m afraid the fighting’s pretty well dispersed. We’ve, erm, got it all in order,” I say, nodding comfortingly.
Sophie isn’t the woman she once was. Her naivety and innocence that I occasionally found grating have gone. She seems well aware that we’re on the back foot here.
“That noise,” she says, frowning. “That incessant noise. I assume it’s to confuse us, stop the Bats from hearing properly?”
The battering of my eardrums isn’t quite as bad back here. It’s still endless and nauseating, but not to the same extent as around the perimeter.
“Yeah, exactly.”
“And the smoke, that’s to stop our Hawks from seeing?”
I nod.
“Tell me the truth, Brie. Are we really safe here?”
“Oh yeah, sure,” I say brightly. “If you weren’t, Rycard or someone would have sent the order to move you to Inner Haven…”
“No,” she cuts in, “that’s not what I mean. I mean, all of us? Are we all safe here, in the city?”