Crises and Conflicts: Celebrating the First 10 Years of NewCon Press

by Ian Whates

  Looking around, it was clear the centuria was lost. They relied on discipline, on fighting as one, but the barbarians were amongst them now. Without the chance for the legionaries to form up, to use their superior tactics, savagery would win this day. It felt like a step backwards for the civilisation and order Rome was bringing to the world, albeit by sword and brand. Through the trees Cain could see a man on horseback watching the slaughter. He was too busy trying to find his men but later he wondered if the man had been Civilis himself.

  He managed to find the rest of his contubernium and led them back to the camp, avoiding the barbarians who were hunting them. Later, even though they had fought in the rest of the revolt, the disgrace of their defeat in the woodland caught up with them. When the Legio X Gemina finally relieved them, Cain’s contubernium was sentenced to decimation. It was Cain who underwent the fusturiam. As blow after blow from the cudgels wielded by his men rained down on him, he realised that he had not managed to avoid the pain of death, just postpone it. In such a long life it was only the second time he had died.

  After the Loss, Ubaste System

  The mech shed micro drones as he sought cover in the shadow of a mountain-sized asteroid. He finessed, cajoled and even bullied systems back on line, trying to turn the mech into a functioning war machine again whilst it’s thrusters cooled.

  He wondered if it had been too long now. Had his edge gone? His best idea was to camp in his current concealed position and wait for the Rakshasa mech to show itself.

  The micro drones above him started to go offline. They might not have provided an exact position for a target lock but the storm of electronic warfare rendering the micro drones useless at least told him the direction from which the enemy mech was coming.

  Too late he realised it was a feint.

  1415 CE, Agincourt, Northern France

  4. They outnumbered the English more than ten-to-one if you didn’t count the archers. As Cain sought to control his snorting destrier, which stamped its hooves in the thick mud, he couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t count the archers. He spared the spurs and used his knees to guide the exquisitely trained warhorse through the mud and into the vanguard with the other men-at-arms of his free company

  “Where are our archers?” Cain asked. He was looking over a brown plain, a recently ploughed field turned to mud in the heavy rain, droplets of which were still dripping off his helm. Ahead the muddy plain narrowed between two strips of woodland surrounding the villages of Tramecourt and Agincourt.

  “The lords want the glory for themselves. After all heavy cavalry has won battles for more than two hundred years.”

  With some difficulty Cain turned around to look at the speaker on the horse next to him. He had avoided Sir Malcolm du Bois, the Norman-Scot mercenary who commanded their free company. He had seen the fire burning under his skin, in the knight’s veins, and as a soldier he was second only to Cain. He suspected that du Bois was older than he claimed and, like himself, had been cursed by God to walk the Earth, undying. He had caught du Bois studying him on a number of occasions and more than once it had seemed as though the knight had something to tell him but had changed his mind at the last moment.

  “That’s madness,” Cain said, irritation overcoming his wish to avoid the blonde haired, blue-eyed knight. He pointed at the two strips of woodland. “The English archers have set up by the tree line. I can see stakes and doubtless they have dug pits.”

  “We’re charging the archers.”

  “Even so we’re riding into a trap without our own archers to cover the charge.”

  “Well you, myself and the high constable are in complete agreement.”

  Cain shook his head. He wished he could muster something more than irritation and contempt for the inbred lackwits that seemed to take in turns to get otherwise competent members of his profession killed in significant numbers.

  Du Bois muttered something as the horn blew, signalling their advance. Cain didn’t quite catch what had been said but he thought he’d heard the word Hattin. Cain spent a moment calming his horse. The destrier had either picked up on his master’s irritation, or else the sense of angry futility amongst the more experienced men-at-arms. Counting the archers, Cain reckoned the French outnumbered the English four-to-one, which was still a significant advantage. That didn’t, however, mean that you forgot how to conduct a battle, or ignored your other advantages.

  It was hard going for the horses and as the field narrowed between the two strips of woodland they became more and more closely packed together. Even so, Cain had managed to coax his mount into a canter and then a gallop using his spurs.

  At first he thought there’d been an eclipse. Then came a moment of near-religious dread as his mind struggled to cope with what he was seeing. He had fought in more wars, been in more battles, than he could count but he had never seen so many arrows coming towards him, even at Cunaxa. They seemed to form a solid canopy, a thick black rainbow against the drizzling grey sky arcing in towards the French heavy cavalry.

  Cain turned his head, lowering it, riding blind but protecting the eye slit and air holes in his helm. Many of the men-at-arms, particularly the noble born, eschewed shields, trusting in the quality of their armour to protect them, Cain, however, knew the value of a shield and raised his. An armour-piercing bodkin point penetrated it and went through his gauntlet, only to be stopped by the mail underneath. More arrows rained down, their sharp narrow points coated in faeces. They imbedded themselves deep in his shield, glanced off his helm hard enough to make his head ring, or bounced off his armour deadening limbs and driving the breath from him.

  Others were less lucky. Arrows penetrated less well-protected limbs, pierced the lower quality steel or wrought iron of the cheaper armours. Worst hit were the horses. Only a few of them wore barding. Horses went down in the mud at the gallop, causing collisions of horseflesh that took down even more mounts. Panicking wounded horses escalated the chaos. Cain caught a glimpse of a thrown rider moments before he was trampled into the mud.

  Cain risked a glance forward. An arrow hit his helmet, denting it, pain lanced through his head but he saw enough. He was closing on the stakes that protected the English archers. The bowmen were no longer loosing into the air, instead aiming straight at the remaining horses. Everything slowed down. He actually saw the flight of the arrow that hit his horse. He felt the destrier’s forelegs buckle and then he was tumbling. He hit hard. There was a moment of darkness and a great weight on him. The sounds of the battle seemed to recede. Then his screaming horse tumbled on and he was looking at the grey sky and the individual drops of rain falling on him as the never-ending storm of arrows flew overhead.

  It was more instinct than anything else that made him roll to one side as a newly dead horse and rider slid past him, spraying him in mud. He knew he had to stand up if he wanted to live. He struggled to his feet. An arrow caught him in the chest but did not penetrate his breastplate. He thought about trying to crawl away, trying to hide, but instead used his broadsword to push himself to his feet. The archers were amongst the stakes now, killing the knights and men-at-arms that had made it this far. Two of them came forward of the stakes. Both were very broad across the shoulders, so much so they looked deformed. They wore hauberks over fool’s motley, their faces painted black and red to resemble the demonic Hellaquins of Norman legend. The one with long dark hair still carried his bow. The other a mattock, the heavy hammers the archers used to drive the stakes into the ground. Cain shifted his shield and raised his sword, struggling through the mud towards them, his rasping breath nearly deafening in the confines of the helmet. The hellaquin with the bow loosed. The arrow caught him in the sword arm just under his armpit. The area was only protected by mail, which the bodkin easily penetrated. Cain howled in pain. The arm dropped snapping the arrow. More pain. The hellaquin with the mattock crossed to him quickly. Absurdly Cain noticed that he was barefooted, before the mattock hit him hard enough to buckle his helm and crack hi
s skull. It hit him hard enough to change the shape of his head. Cain hit the ground, his body shaking, spasming. For a moment he was reminded of fusturiam he had undergone at the hands of his own legionaries.

  “Can he be ransomed?” the hellaquin with the bow asked as he crossed himself. The hellaquin with a mattock leant down next Cain as he fought to regain control of his limbs.

  “There’s no device I can see,” the hellaquin with the mattock said as he drew a long, narrow bladed knife with a guard shaped like a crucifix.

  “Kill him then.”

  Cain watched as the misericorde was slid through the eye slit of his helmet. He decided that this death was easier than the previous.

  After the Loss, Ubaste System

  Not wanting to give his position away with an active scan, he had looked up. The Rakshasa mech had launched his own electronic warfare drones to jam the sensor net created by the micro drones and then looped under the asteroid.

  He triggered the mech’s thrusters, shooting away from asteroid. A lance of bright light made the mech’s energy dissipation grid glow brightly before turning part of the war machine’s lower torso into so much slag. He left teardrops of molten composites in his wake. Somehow he had the presence of mind to bank hard as another line of destructive energy narrowly missed him. He fired blind, depleting the rotary EM cannon’s magazine by half in an effort to make a net of hypersonic munitions spreading out towards his opponent. It was only then that he actually caught a glimpse of the Rakshasa’s mech, as the cannon rounds created tiny explosions of powdered composites across its body. The enemy war machine was ugly, efficient, angular, but as the fusion lance stabbed out again, somehow magnificent. The Rakshasa’s mech was decorated, however. The feline warrior had tried to make it resemble one of the huge hunting cats that had once prowled the savannahs of Ubaste Prime. He had tried to hide the mech’s true form, its purpose, its beauty as a weapon.

  He spun his own mech away from the beam of energy. Smart explosives laced throughout the war machine’s armour, blowing out the slagged armour so the mech’s limited carbon reservoir could attempt to grow more.

  Information from the mech’s sensor appeared in his vision. The drone feint had been a double bluff. The electronic warfare had covered the missiles the Rakshasa mech had sent arcing over the asteroid in a bid to catch him in a simple, but effective, pincer movement.

  1571 CE, Enryaku-Ji, Temple Complex, Mount Hiei, Japan

  5. Cain watched, from the safety of the treeline, as an arrow hit one of the samurai harquebusiers. The man staggered back before toppling to the ground. It did not stop the rest of his line from firing their tanegashima matchlocks. Smoke filled the air as the shot whistled through the trees and up the hill towards the temple and ‘its sohei defenders. More of the warrior monks fell. The first rank of harquebusiers knelt down and started to reload their tanegashimas, the next row marched between them, aimed and fired. They then stopped to reload, and the next line marched between them. There was a screaming from further up the hill and one of the sohei ran towards them, his naginata polearm held high, tears in old eyes. Lead propelled by black powder shattered the lacquered wood of his dō breastplate and he slid face first down the slope over the wet leaf-strewn earth.

  Cain could see smoke rising above the trees from various points on the mountain as a number of temples, including the Hiyoshi shrine to the mountain’s kami spirit Sannō, burned. He had heard one of the sohei’s curse Oda Nobunaga for this act of apparent sacrilege. The curse didn’t seem to have done the powerful daimyo much damage and it looked as though the power of the sohei, allies of Oda’s enemies amongst the Azai and Asakura clans, had been broken. Oda had brought his army to Mount Hiei and killed every man woman and child he found. Now it was simply a matter of the harquebusiers hunting down the few surviving sohei. Cain didn’t think that Oda gave much thought to gods, spirits and curses. To Cain’s mind this was because the warlord didn’t know enough to be afraid.

  The samurai fired their tanegashimas again. Another cloud of smoke rose into the still rain-damp trees. Then they moved forwards into their own smoke, the next volley lighting the cloud from within as they continued their seemingly inexorable advance. Cain moved out of the treeline towards the samurai who had fallen. He was dead. There had been an artistry to his death. The utilisation of a skill hard earned, finesse. There was no finesse to the lingering stench of the black powder. The dead samurai’s tanegashima lay a few inches away from his outstretched fingers. His daishō, the katana and wakizashi, long and shortswords, remained in their scabbards, thrust through his obi belt. Cain had come here looking for warriors. Instead he had found the same thing that he had left back in Europe. The honour was gone, the skill was gone, war was little more than a machine now. He reached down and drew the katana from its scabbard, holding it up to examine the elegant curve of the blade. He knew enough to realise that he shouldn’t handle a samurai’s sacred weapon but he was so disappointed at what he had found here, yet another one-sided massacre. He wondered for a moment if his not inconsiderable skills would have affected the outcome if he had joined with the sohei.

  “Red Hand, do you know that I could take your head for such a thing?” a voice asked in heavily accented but passable Portuguese. Cain did not turn around. Instead he stood admiring the watered, folded steel of the blade. It was exquisite. He had wielded fine swords before, made from bronze, from iron and then steel, but the European swords, even those out of Toledo, were crude pieces of metal compared to the swords he had found in Japan. The blade glinted where it caught the low autumnal sun.

  “I have heard it said that swords contain the souls of the warriors that bear them,” Cain answered in Japanese. After so many years he had developed a talent for languages, even one as complex as Japanese. He turned to face the speaker. Oda Nobunaga was a balding, unassuming, moustachioed man. His remaining hair was tied back in a somewhat sparse looking topknot and he had eschewed armour for several layers of kimono. Two samurai retainers in full ō-yoroi armour stood at either side of the warlord. Cain could see the disgust and hatred in their eyes despite the menpo masks, carved to resemble the demonic Oni, which covered their faces. They would be furious that a gaijin had dared soil one of their sacred blades with his touch.

  “However well-crafted, it is just a piece of metal, a tool, nothing more,” Oda said. “You do strange and terrible things to my language and talk of the soul. Are you with the Jesuits? Their fervour amuses me.”

  Cain continued to examine the blade, not answering immediately. He could feel the two retainers bristling. He knew he was being disrespectful. Briefly he wondered why he was trying to provoke a fight. Was it his disappointment?

  “I have no use for God,” Cain finally said, still not looking directly at the powerful daimyo. Oda regarded him for a moment, but the gaijin’s disrespect was too much for one of the retainers. He stepped forwards and opened his mouth to issue a challenge but Oda held his hand up and the retainer fell silent. Cain wasn’t sure if Oda was shrewd enough to have guessed at the truth behind Cain’s apparent confidence, or was merely curious about the gaijin.

  “I have no use for them either,” Oda told him. “Perhaps you are one of the Portuguese traders?”

  “I travelled here with the Dutch but I am not a trader.”

  “No, I did not think so. You are a man of violence. Is that why your hand is stained the colour of blood?”

  Now Cain turned to look at Oda, again the retainers bristled as he failed to lower his eyes, but Cain had been a king and this man was just a warlord.

  “I am looking for warriors...”

  “Lord Oda!” The sohei that stepped out of the woods was already wounded, his left arm hung limp at his side and blood dripped out of his armoured kote sleeves. He was dragging his naginata behind him. “Will you face me in single combat?”

  Oda was still looking at Cain.

  “It’s not that I’m afraid, you understand?” Oda said and Cain could see that th
ere was little fear in the daimyo, if anything there was a spark of madness. “But I know that there is one enemy that we can never defeat no matter how much we would have it otherwise.” He turned his head towards one of his retainers and inclined it slightly. The sohei saw what was happening and dropped the naginata, reaching awkwardly for his wakizashi. The retainer drew a matchlock pistol from his obi; its barrel was carved into the semblance of a dragon. The dragon breathed fire. Cain felt the shot pass him as he whipped round to see the sohei’s face cave in on itself and turn red. The warrior monk fell backwards into the undergrowth. Smoke drifted through the trees. Oda coughed.

  “Do you know who that enemy is, Red Hand?” Oda asked. Cain nodded, looking down at the katana.

  “Progress,” Cain said quietly. Oda and the retainers started up the hill after the harquebusiers.

  “Just so,” Oda said as he passed. “You may keep the sword.”

  Moments later, Cain heard another volley of tanegashima fire. He dropped the katana onto the wet earth and walked away.

  After the Loss, Ubaste System

  The thrusters on the soles of the mech’s feet and the stubby wings that extended from its legs glowed as he spun the war machine in flight. Ball-mounted lasers filled the surrounding vacuum with harsh strobing light, destroying the incoming missiles even as they spored sub-munitions. The resulting explosions kicked his mech around but were too far away to cause any real damage. That hadn’t been the point, though. They were to keep him busy. He triggered his manoeuvring jets at random as the thick beam of energy from the enemy mech’s fusion lance stabbed out again and again, each time missing him more through luck than judgement.