by Gross, Dave
In either event, she had not given the appearance of weakness.
A flash of lightning drew Aurora’s gaze to the center of the Cygnaran camp. The Thunderhead was on the move. As it tramped through the camp, two pairs of smaller warjacks fell in beside it. Aurora recognized them from the identification plates she had studied. They were Lancers and Fireflies. The former would extend the reach of their warcaster’s spells, while the latter could fire bolts of lightning, like the Thunderhead and their controller.
“Where is Nemo?” said Aurora. She squinted down at the field but couldn’t spot him.
Aurora imagined the hand of the goddess had directed Sebastian Nemo to this first substantial conflict with the Convergence. Prime Enumerator Septimus had told Aurora that Cyrissists from several factions in Caspia had made repeated overtures to the Artificer General. Such a keen mind would have made a splendid addition to the leadership.
Or a splendid triumph to the one who defeated him.
“Here he comes,” said Sabina.
Nemo and his assistant emerged from behind a long tent. A platoon of Stormblades followed, their glaives igniting as they ran.
The Thunderhead leaped the trench, followed an instant later by the Fireflies and Lancers. The smaller warjacks clutched sizzling electro-glaives or war spears in their right hands. Upon the Fireflies’ left arms were mounted storm blasters, lightning already flickering along the weapons’ coils. The Lancers held up their shields and ran past the other warjacks, exposing themselves to a charge from the Ciphers.
Aurora would not be lured into another trap. She reached out her thoughts to direct the Ciphers to retreat. This time, Nemo could come to her.
With his apprentice at his side, Sebastian Nemo leaped the trench behind the warjacks. For an instant he seemed to hover above the gap, his hair lifted and illuminated by the lightning arcing from the coils on his back to the head of his mechanikal staff.
The brief image caught Aurora’s breath. Twice now she had glimpsed her enemy’s snow-white hair. Once she had even been close enough to see the deep lines in his aged face. She wondered how someone so old could appear so vital, so full of physical power.
The Stormblades followed the warcaster over the trench, glaives or storm throwers in their arms. A moment later, trenchers poured out of their concealment, carbines held high as they ran forward at angles, leaving room between them for the chain-gunner to cover their advance.
As the vectors withdrew, Septimus ordered his obstructors into position before them. Once they stood before the vectors, the clockwork soldiers interlaced their scalloped shields to form a shield wall. There they stood with teleflails raised, ready to smash any who approached their line.
Aurora returned her thoughts to the Ciphers, adjusting their aim to fire upon the advancing Cygnarans. Explosions rained dirt and sod over the Thunderhead and Fireflies, but none landed a direct hit.
A quiet whirring told Aurora that Sabina had magnified her vision as she peered down at the warjacks. For the thousandth time, Aurora rued her mortal eyes. She should have brought a spyglass, but lifting it to her eye would only remind her bodyguard of her fleshy body.
“Not even a scratch,” said Sabina.
Another bombardment servipod volley obliterated a pair of trenchers, painting their nearest comrades red and black.
An explosion in the western wood drew Aurora’s attention. Another followed, this time with the agonizing crack and scream of a felled tree. Amid the clamor of snapping branches came the cries of the commandos who thought they were approaching undetected. The reflex servitors had performed their function, detecting their movement and flying straight toward the men to explode on impact.
Nemo raised his weapon. Beside him his apprentice raised her own, guiding lightning from the warcaster’s galvanic coils and directing it to the Thunderhead before them.
A blazing circle of runes appeared around Nemo’s body, slowly rotating as he filled himself with arcane power. From both his staff and his empty hand, lightning leaped skyward and vanished. The voltaic storm reappeared at the far end of the advancing Cygnar line, where it shot out from one of the Lancers.
The bolt shot into the nearest obstructor, raising the clockwork soldier off the ground in a hideous dance before leaping to the next. The second soldier stood firm as the lightning blackened its shield, and still the lightning traveled along the line. Before it was done, two obstructors lay jerking on the ground, while the others closed the gaps to retain their shield wall.
Before Aurora’s mind could process the swiftness of the attack, Nemo’s storm flashed again, this time from the opposite Lancer. The chain lightning coursed from the warjack to demolish five of Pollux’s reductors.
The Fireflies shot next, lightning arcing from their storm blasters. Each of them shook another pair of obstructors, blackening and melting their armor. The defenders stood fast, but Aurora knew they could not withstand many more such attacks.
The Thunderhead raised its arms, blue palms open toward the nearest Cipher. Electrical arcs leaped across its galvanic coils, coruscating down each blue arm to converge at a point between its extended hands. There the lightning massed for an instant before leaping toward the Cipher.
Superheated rivets popped off the Cipher’s body. One of its arms jerked and spun away. It flew across the field until its piston-spike sank deep into the ground and hung there, trembling like a banner.
“Such power,” said Sabina.
“I have to get down there,” said Aurora.
“Numen, you have just seen what he can do. You must stay well back.”
Aurora leaped from the observation deck. Her spreading wings caught the air and guided her course even before the hovering field took hold. Her bodyguards leaped after her, their own mechanikal wings barely contributing to their flight.
As she dove toward the conflict, Aurora mentally reached out to summon the Mitigators from the east and the Monitors standing in reserve. The vectors responded instantly. Aurora could almost feel their razor bolas and ellipsaws clicking into place. They would make short work of the Cygnar infantry.
At the sight of Aurora and her clockwork angels descending from the astronometric nexus, Septimus signaled most of his troops forward.
With First Prefect Pollux at their side, the reductors held their ground, swarm projectors raised to shoot at any who came within range.
Thick-chested eradicators moved up to defend the reductors. Aurora could almost hear the heavy blades of their protean bucklers as they snapped out to turn the shields into deadly weapons.
The reciprocators followed close behind, their own shields ready to interlock to form another wall or to guide their long halberds over the eradicators before them.
“Numen, please fall back,” cried Sabina. “Allow us to defend you on all sides.”
“No,” cried Aurora. “Nemo showed what he can do to us. Now we will show him what we can do to him!”
Aurora led her angels in a charge on the Stormblades. As she raised her weapon, they fell into attack formation behind her. Years of training and combat had honed them into a unified weapon, with Aurora at its point.
The knights raised their glaives too late to save themselves. Aurora whirled her polynomial staff in deadly configuration, smiting every man in reach. Most of them fell, skulls staved in, limbs shattered or severed. Those who survived fell to the angels’ binomial blades.
Aurora flew on, sweeping back across her own front lines before the Cygnaran forces could counterattack.
“Numen!” cried Sabina. “We must withdraw now!”
Aurora threw her an open-mouthed smile of disbelief. “Are you serious? After what we just did to them?”
“Numen, look!” Sabina pointed.
A cloud of dust rose from the southeast. Around the eastern woods came a line of charging storm lances. By themselves they were a formidable but not insurmountable force.
The true threat followed behind them.
Infantry an
d wagons came behind the riders, along with several heavy warjacks traveling under their own power. Even at a glance, Aurora could see they were stocked, charged, and ready for battle.
Nemo’s illusory army was rapidly becoming all too substantial.
Aurora silently calculated her odds based on the existing information. If she unleashed her full forces, she would surely overwhelm Nemo’s present forces, but not before the Cygnaran reinforcements arrived. She weighed the danger of launching an immediate strike against the likelihood of depleting her forces so badly that she could no longer defend the realignment node against the rest.
In her hesitation, Nemo’s trenchers fired a withering volley against her troops. A few previously damaged by lightning fell, but more reciprocators remained standing, shields locked. The reductors and eradicators stood ready to charge on her order.
Or to retreat.
Aurora reminded herself that she did not need to destroy Nemo to defeat him. Time was on her side.
She altered course, flying low to call out to Septimus, “All forces fall back in formation.”
The priest obeyed, relaying the command to the first prefects, who passed along the orders to the prefects of each squad.
Aurora shortened the aim of the Ciphers’ mortars and released another barrage. This time she left a line of craters just in front of the advancing enemy. Like the earlier flare above the cavalry, it was not an attack but a warning. She had drawn a line in the battered earth.
The question was whether Nemo would cross it.
Across the field, Nemo raised a hand. He barked out an order. She could not hear his words, but she saw his officers relaying it down either side of the attacking line. It reached either end so swiftly that Aurora realized with a shock just how close she had come to defeating them.
She cursed under her breath, but it was too late to change her mind. The Cygnarans withdrew to their camp. If she were to pursue, she would have to deal with an uncertain number of reinforcements as well.
Aurora flew back to the realignment node. She had begun the skirmish as a test, but she could feel the desire for victory rising in her belly. Stopping the Cygnaran attack was not the triumph she had envisioned, yet keeping them at bay was one more step toward the success she required.
THE THIRD HARMONIC
The power of understanding transcends the inexplicable.
Nemo
As Nemo returned to camp, the chaos of the Convergence attack subsided, but a rising excitement at the approach of reinforcements took its place.
The storm lances arrived first, their galloping steeds raising a veil of dust before the wagons and infantry that followed. Spotting Nemo, they changed course as he gestured in the direction of Major Blackburn, who had just replaced a frantic guard with a steady field medic to oversee triage of the injured. Once he saw the effort was in good hands, Blackburn went to greet the reinforcements and assign them their stations.
Nemo returned the Lancers and Fireflies to guard positions, giving himself a wider field of options in the event of another attack. The Thunderhead he directed to rest across the lane from the mechaniks’ tent. The warjack’s armor had suffered only light shrapnel abrasions, but he thought he felt a hitch in its step on the way back.
Unless, he thought sourly, he had only imagined imperfection lay in the warjack and not in his own waning strength.
Regardless of whether the defect was real or a psychosomatic product of Nemo’s own fears of aging, he wished to be certain the Thunderhead was in sound shape before fielding it again. Despite its impressive armor, the warjack’s galvanic functions sometimes proved more fragile than the mechanikal innards of its steam-driven counterparts. It required a certain amount of extra care and attention.
That thought reminded Nemo of his promise to look into acquiring Mags Jernigan a new mechanikal leg. Like the Thunderhead, she could use a little maintenance.
But for now it would have to wait.
The damage to the camp was not as bad as Nemo had feared. Half a dozen tents had been shredded or blown down, but only one contained casualties. The surviving storm lances had returned their steeds to the paddock the troops had constructed in haste a day earlier. There the new arrivals joined them. The men tended the horses while their captains determined the new chain of command beneath Major Blackburn.
Among the lances rode a heavyset man with a pale, pockmarked face. Rather than a sword, a heavy spiked mace hung at his side. Nemo saw a stylized human figure surrounded by rays of light—the symbol of Morrow—emblazoned in gold on the knight’s white plate armor. Behind him rode a younger knight bearing the banner of Morrow.
When he spied Nemo, the rider and his ensign rode toward him. They reined in their steeds, dismounted, and saluted.
“Artificer General,” said the knight.
“Chaplain Geary.” Nemo shook Geary’s hand, glad to see him if for no other reason than to welcome another whitened warrior to the camp. Unlike Nemo’s thick mane, Geary’s hair had thinned so much that the man kept it shorn close, giving his ruddy pate the appearance of a fuzzy peach. “Something tells me you came not simply to help but also to examine my captives.”
Geary shrugged with an apologetic smile. His chagrin surrendered to a grim expression as he practically spat the word, “Cyrissists. Ever since the Witchfire Affair, I’ve always said they would show their true colors one day.”
“So you have,” agreed Nemo. Considering recent events, he felt no need to dispute the knight’s assertion, although he had never before shared the depths of Geary’s distrust of the cult.
To Nemo the Cyrissists had seemed an unorganized society of eccentric intellectuals and craftsmen. In worshipping a goddess of science, they appeared merely to celebrate their professions—and, frankly, themselves—more than posing a legitimate danger to the Morrowan faith, much less to the public at large. That an isolated faction of them had once served a darker cause had never alarmed Nemo. After all, even the church of Morrow counted traitors, murderers, and worse among its faithful.
The moment Geary had learned that alleged necromancers were found among the Cyrissists, he could barely contain his animosity. Nemo admired the man’s passion, but it seemed indiscriminate.
“May I see them, these clockwork soldiers?” said Geary. The rims of his eyes were startlingly pink against his pale skin. He had sometimes been mistaken for an albino.
“After I have finished inspecting the reinforcements.”
“Of course,” said Geary. “Of course.”
Nemo led Geary through the camp, Finch at his side and the ensign at the knight’s. Nemo saw Geary nod approvingly at what he saw all around them. Nemo was also pleased to see how efficiently the soldiers responded to the recent attack.
Both those who had accompanied him to Calbeck and the newcomers had already repaired or removed the damaged tents. No wounded were to be seen, for they had been carried into casualty tents designated by Major Blackburn.
To the north, trenchers were already at work expanding the defenses. To the east and south, Nemo saw at a glance that rifle and commando officers were mustering their troops for an envelopment action after consulting with Blackburn. All around them, the camp continued to grow as soldiers dug latrines and erected additional shelters.
“How many storm lances, Finch?”
“Ten, sir, not including those we already had,” she said. She had lowered the goggles to protect her eyes against the dust. The pressure on her nose altered her voice so slightly that no one who didn’t know her well would have noticed.
Nemo considered doing the same, but he thought it discourteous when Geary had no such protection.
As they walked through the camp, Finch counted off Stormguard and Stormblades—noting how many of them carried the heavy lightning guns known as storm throwers—as well as riflemen, grenadiers, commandos, medics, field mechaniks, and support troops.
“Look, sir!” Finch pointed at a wagon piled high with crates along with a warjack cov
ered in tarpaulins. The distinctive storm blaster of a Firefly jutted out of its concealment. Above the curved line of its shoulder, a trio of distinctive rods projected above the load, bobbing where their wielders sat concealed on the wagon’s tailgate. “Stormsmiths!”
Nemo nodded, hoping for the best. Ideally, he would have summoned veteran crews, men and women who had fought beside him before. After the conflict in the Thornwood, however, he feared too few of them survived for him to be choosy. He would have to make do with whomever the Lord Commander had seen fit to send from where his forces were recuperating in Point Bourne.
Many stormsmiths were not only brilliant but also disciplined, professional, and reliable. Yet a troubling fraction of the most talented arcanists and mechaniks were also somewhat, for lack of a better term, “eccentric.” Some of the latter sort simply lacked basic social graces, and their behavior was annoying at most. By comparison, however, some could make Sergeant Mags Jernigan seem the epitome of military discipline.
“Who is it, Finch?” Abandoning his own pretense at courtesy, Nemo lowered his own goggles and blinked the dust out of his eyes. “Can you see?”
“No, sir. There’s too much dust in the— Look, they were able to spare us another warcaster!” Her enthusiasm dwindled as she and Nemo heard the figure she indicated calling out verbal orders to the warjacks. “Oh, well, a journeyman, anyway.”
The young man walked between a pair of Stormclads, heavy warjacks wielding massive swords. The Cygnar banner fluttered between a pair of smokestacks chuffing out clouds of coal smoke above their shoulders. Unlike the Thunderhead, the Stormclads enjoyed the benefit of galvanic energy only in their powerful generator blades. They still moved, like most warjacks, by steam power.
Nemo sighed. He supposed it was better to receive a journeyman than no warcaster at all. Still, he would have preferred to have Victoria Haley or one of the other veterans at his side.
Noting his expression, Finch whispered, “Try not to scare this one off.”