by E. M. Hardy
Martin honestly thought he would have a harder time convincing the various emirates from all over the Bashri to help out. Someone coming up to you and telling you that a swarm of bird-lions and giant man-lions made of clay were coming to attack your home? That’s a pretty hard sell for most folks.
Then again, he was not most folks. The faceless clay men delivering the message might just have made it easier for the other emirs to comprehend the seriousness of the threat.
That, and the various defense treaties they signed with Prince Suhaib forced them to honor their agreements with Ma’an.
Then there was the League of Merchants.
Martin scoured the throng of soldiers with his eyeballs, sending one down when he spotted the executive’s robes and distinctive black veil of the woman he was looking for.
League Executive Isin Safak sat atop a camel, rolling her hips in time with the beast’s steps while keeping pace with the four League-aligned emirs at her side. The veiled woman raised a hand in greeting at Martin’s eyeball as it descended and settled beside her.
“Hey there, Isin.”
“Hey there, pothead. I’m guessing that the mob over to the northeast is from the green lands?”
“The green lands?”
Isin snickered maliciously at Martin’s curious tone. “Short for the lands covering the Empire, the Sovereignty, and the Dominion. Quite appropriate in my opinion, since everything over there is so full of greenery it’s disgusting.”
“Ah,” Martin said, chuckling as the pieces clicked into place. The Bashri Basin had its fair share of arable land, especially around the rivers and springs and oases. For the most part, however, the land here was choked by sand and sun. Brown, grey, and red dyed the vast majority of the land within the Basin.
Martin’s constructs helped dig for new wells and lay out canals to improve irrigation, but only carefully tended farms and orchards saw greenery of any kind. It was easy to see just how different things were when compared to the fertile lands around the Empire, where plant life bloomed and blossomed every which way.
“Hmph. I am not impressed by what I see,” harrumphed one of the Emirs trotting beside Isin. “Fancy weapons and armor, indeed, but I bet they’re cooking underneath all of it.”
“Be careful there, Haafil,” taunted the Emira riding beside the ruler. “No need to let your envy cloud your magnanimity just because their soldiers have better equipment than those pitiful things you force your troops to wear.”
“Envy? Over that pompously decorated lot over there? HAH!” barked the ruler of the Ramal Emirate with scorn.
“Lubna, those over-decorated little bags of soft fluff can’t even march for more than a mile without taking up a swig of water. Very much like your troops. Or should I say conscripts? I swear, they are all skin and bones, barely able to march in line without staggering like drunk fools.”
“Aaand there they go again,” sighed Isin. “You know, Haafil, just because I was promoted to Senior Executive does not mean I still can’t jab a needle in your muscle-addled brain.”
The beefy emir waved his hand away. “Pah, to jahannam with you, you snake. I thought I was done with you when you were promoted. Aren’t you supposed to be scheming and threatening someone else’s family?”
Emira Lubna Far’eh’s laughter tinkled under the harsh sun and dry air of the desert. “What is this? Is the great and unshakeable Emir of Ramal quaking in his sandals at the thought of his old tormenter coming back to haunt him?”
Martin coughed to catch the attention of the squabbling leaders of their respective armies, cutting off Emir Haafil before he could shoot back a retort toward his rival. “I hate to rudely interrupt this lovely reunion, but I have to ask: how many troops did the various Emirates manage to raise?”
“Around fifty thousand,” drawled Isin who sighed with disapproval.
“What?” shot the ruler of Ramal, confused. “Didn’t you say that you were assembling an army a hundred thousand strong to face these constructs invading from the Wastes?”
Emira Lubna snickered at Isin’s comment. “To be honest, my dear Haafil, only the Emirates directly controlled by the League managed to actually raise the full complement of ten thousand troops each for this incursion. That means you, me, Safaa, and Zubair. The others gave one excuse or another why they couldn’t meet the levy,” Lubna said with a dismissive wave of her hand.
The emir of Ramal reddened with rage and was quite ready to explode when Isin stepped in, diffusing the man’s tirade even before it began. “The smaller neutral emirates are reluctant to send so many of their fighting forces against a threat so far away from their home. Many think that this is a ploy to lower their defenses, make them vulnerable before the League stabs them in the back.”
Isin smirked at that. “Sounds like a good idea, to be honest. The only problem is the very real, very dangerous threat that is actually threatening our borders.”
She shifted her eyes behind her veil, studying Martin’s eyeball closely. “And if they operate anything like what our scouts report, then this is not the time for us to play games. The neutral emirates will understand the gravity of the situation once the others troops return home, give their reports about the peril we are facing right now.”
Martin smiled inwardly at that. For all of Isin’s snide commentary, for all her apparent worldliness and talk about betrayal, she was a true believer in the new, cooperative world that Martin envisioned.
And she was doing her part to realize his dream of uniting the disparate nations of this world, of withstanding the threats that would inevitably rain down upon it. She used the influence of the League of Merchants to bring the disparate nations together, to send their operatives out to build ties instead of breaking them apart.
The eldest son of Emir Ma’an, however, was not in a joking mood.
“So you say,” retorted Prince Mufeed, the eldest son of Emir Ma’an and the overall commander of Ma’an’s military forces. “My father’s emirate will be the first that these so-called ‘rogue’ constructs will ravage if they have their way.
“Wouldn’t it be convenient for the cartels for that to happen, hmm? Send just enough troops to appear like you’re adhering to the terms of our agreements and then step in when our forces are tired and depleted?”
Isin smirked, her eyes twinkling cruelly as she responded to Mufeed’s hostility in kind. “Indeed, our evil plans involve adhering to our military commitments, honoring the mutual-defense conditions stipulated in our treaty even while the other emirates are dragging their feet. What ever shall we do now that our machinations have been exposed by your keen insight?”
Emir Haafil roared out his laughter. “Ah, Mufeed. Where were you when I needed you? If only I was half as paranoid as you back in the day, my emirate would not have fallen to betrayal and intrigue!”
Emira Lubna snorted out her derision, ready as usual to snipe at her rival. “More likely you would have slurped down a poisoned bowl without second thought. Your gullibility is the only reason the League bothered to keep you around at all.”
Martin brought his eyeball closer to the older prince, ignoring the two emirs who started their bickering all over again. “If you don’t want to believe me or the others here, then at least believe your sister. She and her scouts fought the rogues themselves, so they know that their threat is very real.”
“And that’s exactly why I’m here,” the crown prince of Ma’an snorted as he crossed his arms. “Now enough dawdling around. Let’s go and see if these rogues of yours are as dangerous as you paint them out to be.”
Chapter 06
“Oh.”
“Believe me now?” quipped Martin through one of his walkers, its painted face turned toward Prince Mufeed, the man’s eyes widening in shock. “I meant it when I said that the threat was serious. What, did you think I requested thousands of troops just to mess around here? Back me up here, Isin. Isin?”
Martin turned
the head of his walker around, seeing a flabbergasted Isin gawking at the sight before her. Not even the flippant Executive could muster her quick wit and sharp tongue as she simply stared out at the desert.
Martin would have rolled his eyes if he still had them. He told them what to expect, numerous times and with great emphasis that he wasn’t making anything up. And now all the various leaders of this expedition—emirs, operatives, executives, generals, commanders, a Shogun, and a Maharaja—each and every one of them stood gaping.
Just a few short hours ago, everyone was complaining about holding a position in the middle of nowhere. They wondered why they were just sitting on their asses instead of meeting the enemy. Martin blocked their desire to advance, to get a closer look at the mysterious rogues he warned them all about. He even prevented them from sending out their scouts.
They quickly reined in their eagerness after seeing what they were going to ride into.
A massive cloud of dust and sand kicked up from the horizon as millions of rogue constructs marched from the former edge of their zone of control to the new one. Martin calculated the distance from the newly-finished pyramid, counting a dozen miles and adding another one for good measure.
This was where his walkers along with the allied army set up positions, watching the advance from the top of sand dunes and lookout towers built by his dolls.
“The majority of the rogue constructs, the smaller ones, are called hieracosphinxes,” Martin started explaining to the assembled leaders and commanders—pulling them out of their shock. “They rely primarily on speed and aggression, and will swarm your troops with numbers while they tear you to pieces with claw and beak. They have a tendency to jump through the air, landing smack-dab in the middle of your formations.
“The big honkers towering over everything else are called androsphinxes. They are tough, they are nasty, and they move a lot faster than their plodding pace suggests. They’re taking it easy now, but they move even faster than the small hieracos when they detect a threat inside their control radius. They will attempt to shatter tight formations, opening up space for their smaller brethren to rush in and deal damage.”
Martin’s walker paused for a moment to let the murmurs die down. “The kill zones of these constructs, hieraco and andro alike, are located within the abdomen—deep in the center of their bodies. Hitting the head won’t kill them outright. They’ll just be blinded and will swing wildly if they’re close enough to your troops.
“Hitting the kill zone of the andros is tough because of all the ceramic around it. Just aim for one of their limbs and they’ll start limping. Get two, and they’ll crawl. Get three, and they’re practically out of the fight. Archers with blood arrows are your best bet for taking them down without taking casualties.”
Martin turned his walker toward Ishida, Venkati, and Qiu Ja. “Blood-bound weapons can impart enough extra force to slice and punch through their ceramic bodies. That means your troops will have an easier time dealing with the rogues. Everyone else needs to use heavier weapons to crack the ceramic, keep hitting them hard until they break down.”
“Right then,” Martin’s walker said as a dozen of its counterparts trooped beside the various generals and commanders of their respective armies. “With that out of the way, please turn your attention back toward the assembled rogues out there. I’ll be conducting a quick demonstration of how to fight against them, how to exploit their limited control radius to deal with them.”
***
Martin’s forces advanced under the careful gaze of the allied army, eager to learn what they could from this engagement. His war with the rogues had dragged on long enough for his other constructs to build an obelisk within a dozen miles of the front-line. His dolls were busy building shelters and facilities for the allied army—open-air mud barracks to repel the heat of the sun, latrines to direct sewage away from the sleeping quarters, and simple towers for the commanders to better direct their troops.
All these facilities were crude by design, temporary with no thought for long-term fortification. Any bunker, wall, or tunnel within the effective control radius of the rogues would just be stomped by the andros before being swarmed by the smaller hieracos.
No, mobility was the key to dealing with the rogue threat, especially when it came to logistics.
Cow-boxes hauled mud and debris non-stop, supplying the raw materials needed for construction. Some even brought along larger crystals which the dolls set atop the obelisk near the frontline, ready to pour concentrated heat upon key targets.
Their primary role, however, was to keep the allied army topped up with all the supplies it needed to wage a campaign so far into the wastes.
The punishing heat and desolation of this harsh desert made it impractical for regular beasts of burden to transport food, water, arms, and armor. Thousands of camels wouldn’t be enough to haul the water the allied army needed over a long-term campaign—never mind food, arms, and armor.
His cow-boxes, however, shared none of these limitations.
They not only marched dutifully through the scorching heat without needing food or water, but they could also carry significantly more cargo on their backs than mules or camels. They could even haul wagon trains over the roads built by the dolls, greatly increasing their carry capacity as long as the roads were kept well-maintained.
To be honest, this made them just as vital to the success of this long, drawn-out campaign as Martin’s combat constructs and the soldiers of the allied army. They would allow the humans to wage a prolonged war against the rogues in relative comfort. A reliable supply train would ensure they fought in top condition, grinding away at the rogues for as long as they needed to.
And then there were the laser scarabs.
If Martin’s experience was anything to go by, he expected the scarabs to contribute little against the rogue constructs. Their lasers may be effective against flesh and blood targets, but the heat-resistant properties of ceramic required far too much energy for too few results.
Still, he never knew when their support fire could prove useful, especially against the towering androsphinxes.
Martin’s walkers marched right up to the very border of the control zone, the hieracos straining against the limits of their range. If there was one thing that Martin was thankful for when dealing with these rogues, it was their complete and utter lack of adaptability.
A memory flashed in his mind, one from the time when he just arrived in the world of Copsis. He remembered finding a small pyramid hidden away in a rock formation. It contained the memories of Amun, the Chief Builder responsible for overseeing the pnevmatic program of his people. The long-dead man lamented the rigid programming of his constructs, of their inability to proactively adapt to changes on the battlefield. The invaders easily exploited this vulnerability, using their overwhelming firepower to blast the mindless constructs from afar.
The rogues never got over this limitation, but he would not underestimate his foes—not again. He already paid a hefty price for assuming the big andros were slow, lumbering giants.
Martin carefully counted out a dozen miles from the center of the closest pyramid, the newly-built one. The hieracos and the andros stood firm right at the twelfth mile. They weren’t pretending to strain against the limits of their control—they really were pushing out as far as they could. That meant the rogues were not attempting to trick him into overextending his forces, and that he could begin to safely harry their lines once again.
And so Martin began showing the allied army how to abuse the limitations of the rogues.
“Notice that the rogue constructs are stuck at that specific line,” Martin said simultaneously through the dozens of walkers assigned to escort the leaders of their respective armies. This allowed him to speak with an even tone without shouting out.
It also gave him the extra advantage of creeping out the men and women assembled, cooling their bravado and minimizing hot egos to cut down on argum
ents.
“That border is exactly twelve miles from the nearest rogue-controlled structure. In this case, a pyramid that they just finished powering up a few hours ago. Stay beyond that line, and your forces will be able to safely harass the constructs as long as you don’t get pulled into their formations. The rogues aren’t exactly creative… so far. They will continue straining against the border to attack you and yours. Tell your troops to fight conservatively, to hold their positions and wait for the rogues to attack them.”
While Martin explained all this, his walkers used their newly-replenished stocks of blood-bound weapons to begin cutting apart hieracos with ease. Ishida’s forces brought plenty of vials of preserved blood with them, and the presence of numerous auxiliary troops made it far easier to draw blood as needed. Martin wished he had the new upgraded versions of the blood weapons, the ones etched with mandala patterns, but he had to make do with what he had right now.
His extensive experience fighting the rogues drilled valuable lessons into his walkers. He focused blood-bound spearheads into the abdomens of the hieracos, downing them in a single thrust more often than not. One well-aimed thrust was often enough to put them down before moving on to the next target.
This tactic wouldn’t work with regular spears, whose spearheads would simply slide across the hide of the rogues. The blood in these spears, however, added enough condensed force for the tips to pierce through the tough ceramic of the hieracos. Their reach and light weight made them especially useful against the nimble hieracos, putting them down without putting his walkers at risk.
Martin didn’t even bother going after the andros with his limited stock of freshly-resupplied blood arrows. The precious weapons were too few to waste on the andros, who hung back and oversaw everything from their lofty positions behind the hieracosphinxes. He would reserve his arrows for when he actually needed to put them down, focusing instead on thinning out the swarm of hieracos as they continued straining the border zone.