by E. M. Hardy
Martin’s walker froze for a few moments, and Cui Dai sensed that he was trying to think up a rebuttal. He finally sighed with a soft shrug of the walker’s shoulders.
“Okay. Yeah, that’s worth thinking about. These Rats are holdovers from Inagaki’s rebellion, and there’s no telling what they’ll do now that they have their hands on something as dangerous as this. It doesn’t even need to be the Empress’ wedding, to be honest. Just plop a few in the middle of a busy street, or wheel one up to a trading depot and—”
Martin went silent for a moment as it tapped its ceramic chin.
“Although now that you mentioned it… those crystals are pretty dangerous, aren’t they?”
Cui Dai blinked a few times, confused with Martin’s sudden interest in the crystalline bombs.
Chapter 09
“What? Did you think I was exaggerating when I said the rogues numbered in the tens of millions?”
“I thought as much, but this… this is just insane!”
The Khan of the Shining Horde sat atop his apparently sapient mount, both creatures staring slack-jawed at the sight before them. Battle raged on the sands below their location atop a rocky mountain, with the allied army on one side of a clearly-defined line against an endless sea of rogue constructs on the other.
Martin couldn’t help but chuckle inwardly at the man’s dumbfounded expression—one shared among the companions surrounding him. Every single one of them grumbled during the trip down south, not quite convinced about the threat of the rogues as Martin described them. Their skepticism quickly burned away when they saw for themselves the swarm that Martin described.
“And they just… stand there? At that line?”
“A-yup,” Martin drawled, not caring how smug he sounded. “That’s the only reason they haven’t rolled over all of us right now. They’re limited to about a dozen miles around those big pyramids over there,” Martin said as his walker pointed out to the structures off in the hazy distance.
“We’re steadily wearing them down each day, hoping we destroy more than they can build to the point where we can start hitting their pyramids. Though it looks like it’s an easy fight from across the line, picking at an enemy that can’t easily hit back, the sheer weight of their numbers makes it impossible for us to do any real damage. Every casualty we inflict is quickly replaced by who knows how many pyramids off in the horizon.”
His walker turned up to face Hobogetur, who tore his eyes away from the scene of battle to meet the walker’s eyeless gaze. “This is why it’s my hope that your people can help add some much-needed weight to our own forces. The emirs—the local royalties of their respective kingdoms—are sending more troops to augment the allied army as they realize the extent of the threat.
“The Empire of Ren, the Taiyo Sovereignty, and the Sahaasi Dominion are also ramping up the number of troops they send. But it’s still not enough. We need more men and women cracking these rogues, pushing them back hard enough so we can strike at their sources of production.”
Hobogetur grunted at that. “Yes, well… this certainly does change things. It’s one thing to hear about tall tales expecting them to be lies, and quite another to actually see that the tales are far taller than expected.”
Martin nodded with his walker. “I’ll tell you this right now: this army here is the only reason the rogues haven’t yet made their way north, to the Empire and beyond.”
Hobogetur quirked a brow at that. He waited for a moment, shaking his head with a chuckle as he patted the neck of his mount. “Ukum here would like to know why that is so.” The sapient horse stamped its foot, nodding enthusiastically at Martin’s walker.
Martin turned to face the horse, whose eyes roved all over his walker expectantly. He felt a sense of wrongness, of weirdness talking to a horse. He sighed inwardly, wondering if this was how others felt when talking to a faceless man made of ceramic that flowed and bent like muscle but was hard as pottery to the touch.
“That’s simple enough to answer: the rogues mass up around anything that threatens them.
“When I first encountered the rogues with my eyeballs, they were expanding in all directions—building pyramids and obelisks this way and that. When I engaged them, however, I noticed how they pooled their resources to meet my walkers in combat. They halted construction efforts at other points and congregated around my walkers, attempting to contain them at the point of contact. When the allied army came along and started pressuring them from other sides, the rogues poured additional resources to push them back at whatever points they were being pressured from.”
Martin pointed out toward the south, where more allied forces were systematically demolishing the rogues at the lines. “This behavior allows us to ‘pull’ the rogues toward whatever direction we want. And we’re doing that just now, drawing their lines further south and away from the nearest emirate, Ma’an.”
Martin shrugged as he turned his gaze back up to Hobogetur. “This has bought us some more time—more than I first expected—but we cannot ever let the pressure drop. If we don’t keep hitting them hard enough, present a serious enough threat for them to focus their full attention, then they will continue expanding in all directions. They will eventually reach civilization given enough time. And when they do, they’ll follow the trail of any ‘resistance’ they encounter until they’ve basically covered the entire land.”
Hobogetur nodded at Martin’s explanation, losing himself in thought for a moment. “You’ve been fighting these rogues for how long now?”
“Half a year,” Martin replied. “I’ve been pushing them back with my walkers for four months now, and the allied armies arrived two months ago.”
“And they keep ‘fighting’ like this? They don’t even attempt to pull back, lure your soldiers in with feints? They don’t even… I don’t know, throw rocks at you?”
Martin sighed deeply at that. “Yes. Hold the line, build a pyramid, push forward to the new line, hold that line, build another pyramid, rinse and repeat. It sounds stupid, but they make it work by burying our forces constructs.”
Hobogetur shook his head. “Amazing,” he replied drolly. “These lion-like constructs fight without tactics of any sort, and yet they pose such a deadly threat through numbers alone.”
“I just hope they stay stupid,” Martin quickly added. “We’re having a hard enough time with their simplistic ways, and I just can’t imagine how hellish it would be if they reacted like a proper military force.
“Speaking of tactics,” he abruptly said, “Take a look up there.”
Martin pointed to the sky with the chin of his walker, Hobogetur, and Ukum following its gaze. There in the sky flew a small formation of chang gun riders. The Imperial soldiers straddled their flying staves, channeling chi to lift them up in the air and propel them forward. Martin smiled inwardly as the eyeball escorting the riders noticed a few carvings on the staves along with branching veins of pulsing blood.
The mandala patterns on their skins and staves better channeled the energies from one to the other, granting them the ability to fly further and with less drain on their energy reserves. The bound blood also served as a fuel reserve of sorts, allowing for a boost of speed when needed. All these allowed the chang gun riders to do far more on the battlefield than serve as mere scouts.
Case in point: their ability to carry a heavy bundle tied to the lengths of the eight rider’s staves.
“Imperial sky-riders,” replied Hobogetur blandly. “We don’t often see those up in the Grass Seas flying out in the open; easy prey for our horse archers.”
“Yes, well, that may be so if you have excellent archers in your army. They need not fear anything from these rogues, however, thanks to their rigid programming.”
“Programming?” Hobogetur asked, turning his attention away from the chang gun riders and bringing to Martin’s walker.
“Ah, the way they think,” Martin replied with an apologetic nod. “The rig
id, dead-set way these rogues act even when they’re not producing results. Like how they just mass up at the border of their control, holding the line no matter how many casualties they take.
“They’re not really thinking, planning things. They’re more like puppets that follow a very strict set of instructions without knowing what to do when they encounter something new.”
“I… see,” responded Hobogetur blandly.
“Right,” Martin fake-coughed with his walker. “Let’s just wait for a few moments and we’ll see if the new weapon they’re carrying is as effective as I hope it’ll be,” Martin finished lamely with a meek shrug.
“You ‘hope’ it will be effective? What happens if your ‘hopes’ are dashed and you’re forced to eat crow after an abysmal failure?”
Martin resisted the urge to roll his non-existent eyes. Hobogetur was indeed coming back to his senses if he was starting to get all snarky again.
“If it doesn’t work, then we try something else,” Martin said dismissively with a shrug of his walker’s shoulders. “Or we just stick to bashing their heads in until they thin out enough for us to commit to an attack. If this new weapon does work, however… well, let’s just wait and see.”
Martin and Hobogetur did just that—as did thousands who looked up at the sky to see what the new arrivals would do.
***
Eight chang gun riders flew through the sky, each carrying their share of the load.
“There’s the pyramid,” Martin said to the lead flier through the eyeball escorting them, shouting over the roar of the air they cut through. “Aim for the side facing the army! That’ll make it easier for you to come in and land another hit if it’s needed!”
The lead flier nodded, gently adjusting her flight pattern to guide the seven others toward their destination. The towering androsphinxes crouched and lunged high into the air, attempting to swat them out of the skies, but the chang gun riders flew erratically enough to foul their aim.
Martin didn’t take any chances though and focused on the big cats with the nearest obelisk tower. He felt his control over his constructs slip as he charged the big crystal, unleashing a blast of light that knocked down the nearest androsphinx mid-leap. Four other andros charged in, however, and he still needed time to recharge his energy reserves.
Martin prepared for this beforehand though. The samurai within the allied army provided cover, and promptly aimed their deadly blood-bows at the giant andros. Arrows quickly shot through the air, their masters commanding the blood within the deadly projectiles to fly true toward the limbs of the andros. The remaining andros soon stumbled after losing a hind-leg each, no longer able to pounce high into the air to disrupt the chang gun riders.
With the threat temporary cleared away, the lead flier positioned her team to hover over the pyramid, balancing their precious cargo among them. Martin used an eyeball as a guide, dropping straight down from underneath the covered tarp. The eyeball went down low, revealing their aim to be off by a few meters. The lead flier adjusted before another eyeball dropped down. A few more adjustments and they found themselves directly above their target.
The lead flier raised her hand, giving the signal to loosen the ties on the tarp. That done, the team tilted forward, dropping their cargo over the top of the pyramid itself. They flew off the moment they released, expending the blood reserves on their staves to get as far away from the angry androsphinxes loping toward them.
It was a simple and sloppy release mechanism, but it got the job done. The large crystal plummeted down to the pyramid, charged with as much chi and prana as the scarabs could stuff into it. Mandala patterns carved on the exterior of the oversized crystal glowed brightly, helping to condense the sheer amount of condensed power within.
That power would normally have been channeled through a scarab or an obelisk, pouring it all out into a tight beam of light that would boil soft, fleshy targets in a split-second while baking harder, armored ones in a few seconds.
The Order of Rats, however, discovered a way to release all that power in one dramatically explosive moment.
It was ingenious, now that Martin thought about it. The crystals were tough chunks mined out of caverns in the ground, though they were still vulnerable to shattering when struck with enough force. Martin never experimented with the crystals. If he hit them with enough force that they shattered, the compressed energy inside would simply bleed out as a little heat and light.
The Rats, however, simply fired and quenched crystals charged beforehand. At high enough temperatures, the lattices within the crystal became extremely fragile, like glass even. The process was also fickle. Too cold, and the crystals won’t condense. Too hot, and the crystal shatters prematurely—even exploding if it fails on the fourth and final quenching.
The fully fired and quenched crystal, however, would explode catastrophically with the slightest break of the lattice—releasing any and all energy stored within in a single violent explosion.
Which is exactly what happened when the crystal struck the sides of the pyramid.
Bright, white light engulfed the pyramid as the makeshift bomb detonated along one of its walls. The shockwave traveled far and wide, knocking his eyeballs off their flight trajectory and even shattering some of the crystalline lenses of the ones too close to the explosion itself.
The blast knocked out portions of the pyramid’s ceramic walls, which blew inwards from the explosion. When the dust cleared a few moments later, Martin peered through the gaps with his eyeballs and witnessed a familiar sight: large production vats filled with liquefied mud, generators that looked similar to his own pnevmatic generators, and lines of rogue dolls sucking up mud into their distended bellies as they began patching up the holes on the pyramid walls.
That was Martin’s signal to the waiting squad of eight chang gun riders bringing in the next crystalline bomb. The first squad was a test to see how effective the big crystals would be against the pyramids. With the results confirmed, the next bombing squads could fly in and drop their cargo at the same exact spot—hopefully knocking the pyramid out by striking a vulnerable point.
Six other squads of eight fliers for a total of forty-eight riders eagerly readied themselves for their sorties, the second squad already making their way to the damaged pyramid.
Martin explained the attack using his fragments of consciousness, one for each individual relevant enough to warrant a ‘diplomat’ walker beside them.
There was Prince Mufeed of Ma’an, who viewed the chang gun riders with suspicion but appeared secretly relieved that something new was being done.
Then there was Shogun-Elect Ishida Nagatoshi, who was none-too-pleased about learning about the involvement of the Order of Rats in developing the new weapon.
Maharaja Venkati whooped aloud, as did his ghurkas when they saw the explosion wash over the pyramid’s sides.
The General of the Vermillion Bird Qiu Ja nodded with satisfaction, ordering her commanders to prepare to take advantage of a breach should one appear.
Everyone reacted differently to the news of the Imperial ‘bomber’ squadrons, though the general mood trended toward the positive.
After all, this was perhaps the first time that the allied armies saw actual progress fighting against the endless swarm of rogue constructs.
***
As the bombing runs continually wore down the western face of the pyramid, Martin decided that Cui Dai—and by extension, the Empress—may have a point about their danger.
This weapon that the Order of Rats came up with had the potential to do a lot of harm in the wrong hands. A single ‘crystal bomb’ like the ones the bombers were using could shatter massed troop formations, blow down city walls, destroy critical infrastructure, and sow terror in tightly-packed cities.
He only needed to remember how similar explosives were used back on Earth, the devastation they could cause against both military and civilian targets.
Thes
e bombs would have been very useful against the massed formations of the rogues… if only they weren’t so expensive and time-consuming to create.
Mass-producing them required the collective efforts of thousands of chi cultivators working together to provide the energy required for the crystal bombs. Not only that, but they would need to be individually baked and quenched four times.
Four days of baking and another four days of quenching… a total of eight days to produce a single crystal bomb.
But still, he had to admit that this new weapon held the potential to turn the tide in their war against the rogues. The Empire could still produce enough crystal bombs to conduct surgical strikes—perfect for taking out the pyramids.
Now that they had proven themselves as effective weapons against the rogues, the Empress agreed to send additional squads of chang gun riders to help hit the rogues right where it hurt the most.
Some of those in the allied armies even began seeking the guidance from the riders with free time, meditating under Martin’s obelisks as they studied the flow of chi around the staves. The more talented of those meditating under the obelisks would probably be able to unlock the secrets of staff-flying in a few days, begin practicing in a few weeks, and master the whole process in a month or two.
The League of Merchants also stepped up its effort to mine the crystals required for the bombs, actively searching for new deposits within the Bashri Basin. Once they found those deposits, Martin would step in and send his dolls to start building obelisks to facilitate round-the-clock mining and refining.
The roaring cheers of the allied army pulled Martin’s focus toward the front lines. He turned his myriad attention toward the cause of the ruckus, seeing the whole scene from dozens of eyeballs and thousands of walker eyes, and smiled inside.
Androsphinxes, hieracosphinxes, and rogue dolls collapsed as one. Thousands upon thousands of them, all along an extensive chunk of the front line, simply dropped like puppets with their strings cut.