Severus stepped up. “I agree, my Grace. If we abandon these humans, it will do even greater damage to the dwindling trust and faith they have in us. Even the legionnaires will start to question our efforts to fight for a race that doesn’t appreciate us, despite the cause of this war” he said.
Now Vita added, “And not to forget we are duty-bound to protect every human life”. She was smart enough not to mention that it was the Lion who had made that fact painfully prominent to all of them, but Valkyrie could never forget.
Yes, he did. Valkyrie thought to herself. And it’s probably the only thing I’ll ever respect about him.
She looked at each of them in turn. “We will do what we can” she said, yet she had no idea what would be demanded of them when they reached Byzantium and she had a feeling that she desperately needed to.
Chapter 9
PHOENIX DOVE TO the left, avoiding the strike of a devii’s halberd that was meant for her midriff. She struck out with her own attack, burning the brutish Phantom to death with a spear of fire from her hands. To her left, she could see Akurei duelling with her own assailant before beating it back and cutting it apart with her holo-blade. A pair of paradigms rushed her, but were slain with ease in seconds, the commander’s melee skill far surpassing their berserk mindlessness.
Phoenix felt the pressure of the oncoming hordes again as a group of devii sought to avenge their fallen kin. She imagined a sword made from fire in her mind and it formed itself in her hands. Its blade was like molten lava and as she used it to defend herself from the enemy weapons, it seared through them like butter and tore into their bodies like paper, destroying each and every Phantom that came near her.
Like this, she was unstoppable, but as she surveyed the battle in the midst of her killing-spree, she could not say the same for her legionnaires. The 77th and the accompanying legions were steadfast in the wake of the enemy’s onslaught, but it was ultimately a numbers game. With all the ammunition on Kraxus, the Guardians would still have to fall back to a new position and give up ground under the sheer weight of the Phantom masses.
As Phoenix scorched a trio of paradigms, a volley of shells from a squadron of Warhounds behind the Guardian infantry blew apart a huddle of devii that were grouping to overwhelm her. Artillery that was nested further inside the city areas bombarded the enemy like rain with such consistent force that it was hard to understand how and why they kept coming. As she had another opportunity to take stock of the battle, a two-second window that only an experienced war-goer could use, she could see now that the mounds of enemy dead almost matched the number of those still assailing the Guardian lines.
Half an hour after the Phantoms had reached the first line of trenches, having already suffered heavy casualties by the disciplined, steady pulsar fire of the legionnaires, a retreat to the second line had been forced on the Guardians. Now, the first dugout was filled with the corpses of the slain, friend and foe alike.
The bunkers of the secondary network had done their job, providing a fierce field of covering fire for the Guardians to retreat and embed themselves once more. The enemy came at them in waves, each one pushing further and further until eventually the weapons of the legions could no longer keep them at bay.
In less than an hour since the battle’s beginning, the Phantoms had broken through to the bunker line and a vicious melee had broken out once again. Only the supporting tertiary line remained where all the armour legions had already withdrawn to. Their power had been kept back in what was considered a safe position, their guns destroying swathes of Phantoms with every volley, but now it seemed that even they would be met by the relentless swarms.
Phoenix had seen plenty of the 77th die in this battle. Men and women who she had served with and come to know like close friends were now lost to death and memory. There came a point where she could hardly bare to witness those she knew and felt close to fall under the enemy’s wrath, but her heart refused to break. She saw that many of those she was familiar with were still with her, fighting harder than ever against both the enemy and their inevitable fates.
Still, despite their stoicism, their morale was not as superhuman as one might expect. Sooner or later, with their friends lying dead all around them and an enemy that seemed innumerable, the Guardians would lose heart. Phoenix had to do something before that happened.
Suddenly, the ground shook and reverberated under her feet. She looked to the east and saw the cause of the quakes. A Gore Prince was approaching, snarling and wreathed in ichor but instead of striking fear in her, it gave her an idea.
OZ WAS WATER. He was a liquid form, a body of fluid with a state he could change at will. If he needed to become harder to attack and more agile, he could focus his mind until any strike would pass through his matter like a blade through air. When it came for him to kill, he could turn himself into solid ice so perilously cold that even his touch was fatal.
He had come to the front line at the same time as Phoenix and had been fighting for just as long. Seeing his legion suffer like hers was a trial that he was struggling to come to terms with as well. Oz had lost members of the 906th before, but he had always been able to prepare himself in some way for it. Today was different, because today the enemy had not only outmanoeuvred their blockades, but they did it with such speed that Oz couldn’t anticipate how his legion would fare from this.
The battle for Kraxus had taken a turn for the worse, but it didn't make him worry about his own survival. Next to nothing did. He fought on and on, slashing through the fields of paradigms before him with his sword, sheathing it to fire his rifle on full-burst when he got the room. Time after time a Phantom would try to kill him, groups would swarm him, yet he was so agile, so much like jelly on a wall, that none could pin him down.
Walking among them, a demi-god amongst monsters, he slew one with every footstep, laughing as he considered how impossible it was that the Guardians could lose this fight. A pair of golems presented themselves to him and he waved his blade in challenge. They thundered towards him and at the last moment he walked forward, twisting between their lunges, and brought his sword to the fore, gutting the first then the second as he twisted round again.
It was child's play to him, nothing more, but seeing how his legionnaires had to fight with every ounce of their being just to match his skill pained him. It threatened to drive him mad that he would never be able to save them all. Of course he tried, and many of them already owed their lives to him, but it would never be enough. Death found a way of finding him, even if it wasn’t his own.
A booming roar to his side warned him of a devii chieftain’s charge and as the creature's massive fist punched through his body, its arrival quicker than he could believe, it swam through and out his side drenched not with blood, but with the water that formed his entity. Looking down at its weapon, the chieftain grunted and growled in frustration as it saw the liquid covering his hand wasn't the Apostle's red, human life-force, but something else entirely.
Oz, on the other hand, was surprisingly upset. "Do you really think I'm that easy to kill, you small-minded creature?" he asked it. Given its violent nature and predisposition for sadistic slaughter, he knew its mind was even less simple than he suggested, but he was referring to its ability to understand just the kind of foe he was.
As the devii leader attacked again and again, he stepped closer to it with grim determination. With a frown, one that the legionnaires who were able to witness what he was about to do could not understand, he swung his sword in a vicious arc at the devii's neck in the space of a moment.
Less than a second later its head swiftly rolled onto the ground, an eruption of black, viscous blood pouring from its severed body. The lifeless beast collapsed to the floor, a wreck of fleshy destruction that served as an ironic ending to its own desires.
Standing victorious over its corpse, with the nearest Phantoms now tentative to approach him, he thought of the golem’s challenge and what it thought it could do to him.
"Nothing can kill me..." he murmured, a hint of sadness in his voice as he looked at the Guardian fallen. “I’m bound to live forevermore…”
***
JESTARR THOUGHT SHE was beautiful. As a commander, not an Apostle like her, he wasn’t sure if he should feel guilty of seeing her like that. He would describe the way he felt as a deep-seated affection, but not the same love as shared between the Lion and Whitewolf. Instead, the way Jestarr felt about her was like a father would towards his daughter.
The only problem was the woman he saw in that light was no other than Solitaire, the Ninth Apostle.
They had just finished destroying an Oblivion class vessel that was on its way to Kraxus where her kin were struggling to hold their ground. He wasn’t sure how Solitaire had master-minded the strategy that saw its death, but then he didn’t have to be. Though it had taken several Blackstars and a host of Guardian destroyers to kill an Oblivion when they appeared at Pheia, Solitaire had conjured a way to wipe one out here all by the strength of her own small fleet.
It was for this reason, her brilliant military mind amongst others that Jestarr thought she was beautiful. Of course, it helped that she was attractive in the typical sense, but her nature demanded that she could be nothing more than a precious gift to him. He could only ever protect her, because he could never envisage her as an adult which made any semblance of romance impossible for him to even consider. Instead, she was like his child, not because he had any control over her, but because he had a care for her that could only be matched by familial bonds.
Jestarr, looking at her sitting in the command throne of the ship she claimed for her own, caught himself paying too much attention to their relationship and not enough on what she had actually asked him. When she spoke, it had been the softest hint of a question with a smile that turned away with her eyes as she addressed issues that the bridge crew brought to her.
Now the Commander realised it had been too long since she asked for her not to notice his delay. “Jestarr, must you always distract yourself with your thoughts when I need you so?” she asked.
Mentally shaking himself free of the shackles that his thoughts were putting on him, Jestarr recalled what she had originally asked and hurried his answer out. “We are clear of Xeon, my Grace. With the Oblivion destroyed, we have no further reason to delay our travel to Kraxus”. His voice was deep and clear enough to cut through the chatter that was imbuing the bridge with white noise.
Solitaire turned her face to regard him, the light of the holo-screens that had appeared autonomously at her side brightening her multicolour hair. He noticed how it fell across her left shoulder tied in plaits whilst it grew longer to her right.
Once again he considered how attractive she was and yet somehow he knew it was still purely a platonic feeling, like it was out of respect and appreciation rather than any lustful connotation.
As he heard someone call out to her, using her proper title, he suddenly felt abashed that he could even dare to see himself as a father to an Apostle, despite the way he thought he protected her. Such a perfect being could never stem from him, an imperfect soldier.
The direct, piercing look in her doe eyes served to confuse him about her fundamental nature, one that seemed to involve one paradox after another. It was as though there were two sides to her in everything she did, said and felt. Jestarr thought that perhaps she was this marvellously complicated because of the way her mind was organised, though he couldn’t hope to understand what that looked like.
“Then we are free to join my brother and sister? Do you think they will be happy for me to come to them, Jestarr?” Solitaire said.
“How could they not be, my Grace?” he answered honestly. “You are their family, their kin. They should be honoured at your arrival.”
Solitaire nodded, a serious gravity to the gesture that belied how innocent her words sounded. “Please, then, take me to them. I tire of the enemy out here; there’s no challenge anymore” she frowned.
Jestarr acquiesced with a bow. He addressed the ship’s captain and gave the order to jump the fleet to Kraxus. In most legions, a Commander and ship Captain could be considered equals. However, in the Harlequins, Solitaire held Jestarr in the highest esteem meaning that below her, he had unparalleled control of the legion.
He had always wondered at that fact, but perhaps it was because of the way he treated her. Maybe there was a mutual level of care between them that he had yet to understand. It was certainly true that the other legionnaires, though they loved her dearly like him, could never act the way he did towards her and make her feel as safe as he could.
Solitaire would never admit it, but privately she thought Jestarr was the only person that came close to understanding her, which made her both happy and a little sad; she thought she was a puzzle that could never be solved and the Commander might prove her wrong, but she thought that understanding would come from her family, not from a Guardian.
“When we get there, only I get to announce it to them…” she insisted. Then, with a beam that Jestarr saw a hint of malice in, she explained “…because I have something special planned that must be done precisely as I say!”
The 109th didn’t need her to be clearer, Jestarr least of all. They had come to enjoy being surprised by her unspoken plans. Instead of asking about what she had in mind, he received the roll call of ships in the fleet and, when they all showed green to jump, only then began to try and guess what it was that Solitaire had in store for the enemy at Kraxus. He knew she wasn’t going to disappoint anyone. He knew, somehow, she was going to save the world that had been doomed to indefinite war.
AKUREI BROUGHT THE butt of her PR-5 up and smashed it into the paradigm’s face, knocking it backward before gunning it down and reloading. She was running low on ammunition and the rifle wasn’t even hers. She’d picked it up from a dead legionnaire in the midst of fighting, one whose name she felt guilty for not knowing. Her own gun was long lost in favour of her holo-blade as things got up-close and personal with the Phantoms, but she couldn’t deny the power of the firearm when she had room to use it.
She almost had to wade through the blood of the fallen, but it didn’t faze her. As a Guardian she had endured far worse. This was but one nightmare of many, many more that she had lived through. There would be thousands to come as well, but she would survive. She had to. Her duty demanded it.
Akurei shot down a trio of paradigms that were trying to break into the door of a pillbox. Its heavy cannon, an AGG-II, was busy mowing down everything that came into its field of fire. She was amazed that the mounds of dead hadn’t completely blocked the gunners’ vision yet. It was impossible to say what would happen first; their own ammunition running dry, or their line of sight diminishing.
“Commander!” she heard a loud voice call out. When she turned to find its source, she realised it had been her Apostle who now stood nearby, her fiery body attracting the mindless enemy like moths to their killer.
“My Grace?” Akurei replied, throwing down her rifle as she used the last clip and pulling out her pistol. She moved nearer to Phoenix.
“The Gore Prince…” Phoenix nodded towards the lumbering Phantom that was trying to climb across the battlefield, swatting friend and foe alike with its massive sword. Like the majority of the enemy, it was pulled towards the Apostle by merit of her volcanic brilliance.
Akurei had noticed it long ago, but there was little she could do. The Warhound contingents had already opened fire on it and she knew they were killing the creature slowly, even their vindictive shells seemed to be ineffective. “I’ve seen it, my Grace. The Warhounds will finish it before it reaches our lines”.
Phoenix was busy battling a devii chieftain, a match that was grossly in her favour. It seemed intent on crushing her with its hulking muscles, arrogantly unaware of what her skin would do to it if they touched. It amazed Akurei that when the Apostle struck back, the Phantom took so long to realise that its flesh was sloughing off its bones. She
understood then that the enemy truly felt no pain, which could evidently be both a boon and a flaw.
The Apostle blocked the chieftain’s axe as it sought to retaliate and wrapped one hand around its neck. With the barest hint of effort, she intensified the heat in her grip to such an extreme that everything above its chest was vaporised. When she turned to Akurei, a calm expression on her face that belied the bodily destruction she had just caused, the Commander struggled to reconcile the act with such a beautiful being.
“The Prince survives because of what drives it” Phoenix explained. “Look to the rear of the enemy lines and you will see what we must kill to survive this battle”.
Akurei didn’t have the sight that her Apostle did, so it was harder for her to look past the sea of enemies that continued to assault the miles-long tertiary line. Seeing her difficulty, Phoenix pointed her towards the pillbox that she had helped to defend and gestured for the Commander to climb to its roof.
Akurei had to fight off yet more paradigms to get there, but she did it without regret. A golem appeared in the trench, crashing down into it after mauling a pair of legionnaires, but Phoenix obliterated it in a whirlwind of flame in support. Akurei pushed on, climbing over lifeless bodies to get to where she needed to be. She reached the ladder on the pillbox wall, gripped it with her black armoured gloves and began to ascend.
The blood-specked rungs made her slip on the first try, but she caught her foot on a secure hold and gripped more tightly. With a level of urgency that she was careful not to be mindful of, she hefted herself onto the roof of the bunker and looked out over the waves of Phantoms.
It didn’t offer an excellent view, but it gave her enough height to be able to see over all but the largest of the enemy. She tried to ignore the other sights she could witness; dozens of legionnaires being slain, hundreds already decorating the dirt, the burning wrecks of tanks and the constant, every-encroaching horrors that sought to wipe the Guardians from the planet.
The Deian War: Conquest Page 12
