"Snippet" 3: Not one Step Further or... Buying Time.
Sunshine Temple
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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Not one Step Further
So, given the previous two snippits were at the first of April and March.... I figured I could go for another.
Though.... we may be pushing the limit.
This is set futher into the whole Battle of Chicago.
And this time the POV is from a Household Fleet Telephe pilot
+++
Not one Step Further
The Titan was impatient.
She had grown tired of harassing attacks by the Legions and the systematic destruction of their scouts and Huntsmen. Probes had been repulsed and our forces had been able to land in good order.
Supposedly a band of Jotun had been routed by a Troop of Vestal Light tanks reinforced the Einherjar, 2 Senior Wizards, and Dame BlackStone. A human cemetery had been hit by a barrage from an entire artillery maniple after necromancy was discovered and Praetor DawnStrike assaulted it with a group of Broadcast Recon, and again Dame BlackStone was there.
As an Avalon class Heavy Carrier the HFV Valhalla held an entire Ritual Plate Group, nearly four hundred pilots. Including the Countess' Hellions, who were good enough Pilots for Legionaries.
We were the 6th Squadron of the 4th Wing of the 23rd Air Group in First Home Fleet. My Zephyr pushed me forward as my armored wings trimmed back. Scanning the ground that scrolled below us, I saw flickering fires and dark streets.
Human cities were not normally this dark. The Titan had changed that. All the power systems, electrical and magical had been destroyed in the Titan's first strike. Though with her own forces in the city, she seemed loath to repeat that tactic.
Along with our sisters of the 5th Squadron and the 8th Squadron of the 3rd Wing, we bore stolid Telephe Pattern suits. It was a legion joke that the Telephe had the best bodices of any Ritual Plate and the second most complimentary hip armor, especially the bomber variant.
The Telephe was less nimble than the Harmonia air superiority suit, but more agile than the Sarpedona ground support model which was about as close to a brawler as a high-speed enchanted armored suit could be.
Though tonight everyone not protecting fleet assets or escorting landing craft was in a ground support role. The War College Boffins and prim Librarians were not willing to write off the Enemy's anti-air capabilities. Enough of Fomor casters had ranged capabilities that could take out a suit that got too close or too slow.
And the Fomor started out the battle with an impressive number of small, but lethal squid-like fliers but, according to rumor, Dame BlackStone had rallied her own air troops to take them out. Which was mighty convenient if true.
Either way, the Boffins were only willing to strip down the fleet's protective squadrons so much to increase our ground support. There was a chance the Fomor had some sort of anti-air capability and our ships would be very vulnerable without their fighter screens.
In any case, the somewhat more lumbering Sarpedona were more than earning their keep in helping Infantry Cohorts pound Fomor ground positions. Again the Legionary Fliers were earning their keep.
In all honesty, our Telephe Ritual Plate was a heavier version of the Harmonia with elements of the Polydora all-arounder. Built with more warding and a stronger set of enchantments to have more forward thrust from the Zephyr and an increased power capacity for the evocation Lances, the Telephe was the primary long ranged strike platform.
Despite all that, we Telephe were not idle. The enemy had plenty of high-value targets: logistical hubs, command posts, arcanist spell-slingers, or simply troop concentrations that were valuable enough to warrant strafing by a strike squadron, but not valuable enough to get a Torpedo lobbed at them. Even a bombardment flotilla could run empty if the cruisers and torpedo bombers gave enough fire missions.
Our Squadron was currently circling in a large oval circuit midway between the city and the Valhalla as a ready deployment. The Valhalla was positioned well inland of the burning remains of a major airfield. A large number of the local's aircraft had gone down when the Titan had crippled the city's systems. It was harrowing to see so many large fuselages burning. Intact they must have been elegant, if brutishly large, planes.
Apparently, spare landing craft from the Valhalla and her escort ships were rendering aid, and dropping a couple engineering centuries.
Last we heard, the casters were trying to get some of the runways cleared. Either as a position in case our assets needed to land, or as a base for local reinforcements. We didn't know which way it would go. Rumor was that the indigenous fixed wing assets were incoming and Flight Ops was already coordinating.
Of the 12 of us in the Squadron, myself, Valerie, and Celeste were fitted with Gorgon scrying rigs. The joke was, since we had the largest horns, it fell on us to bear the burden of the enhanced sensor suites that clasped over our helmets and faceplates with extendable antennae and other enchantments.
In all seriousness, doctrine was to have one member of each Flight setup with Gorgon rigs. That was one thing I agreed with that bloodthirsty Legion Countess, the brass horns were dragging their hooves on pushing the next upgrade of our scrying systems. Her Demi-wing had already launched and there were rumors she was in the city's university district doing some sort of skullduggery with Broadcast Recon.
Still I made sure to make the most of our capabilities.
I had zoomed in on the dark street below, filling part of my helmet display. The eerie light that flickered closer to the shore and the low clouds of smoke had started to drift over. Fires from the airport were coming in from the other direction. Cars littered the road, so it had not been that full when the Titan released her pulse attack. I idly confirmed, that my scrying telemetry was being sent back to the Valhalla. While what I was looking at now did not seem to be any tactical value, it was good to confirm the system was working. And who knew what those clever girls could come up with.
The Gorgon's audio pickups were not perfect but it was enough to confirm the road below us was silent. The main noise was the thunder-like cracks of artillery towards the heart of the city.
That thought chilled me. That was a lot of heavy ordnance being used in a densely populated area. On the other hand we were a lot of heavy ordnance, and we had gone on three strike missions already with our suits just being refueled and rearmed.
My attention went up to the partial cloud cover. In the dark they were sullen shapes that reflected the fires beneath them and combined with the drifts of ash made it obvious how some of the Imperatrix's Daughters earned their names. My helmet Display helpfully gave an overlay of the various vessels.
The Flight Leader had more powerful, and difficult to control, Zephyr for greater maneuverability. Primus GreenBlade was not quite as agile as a Harmonia dancer, but she could take out anyone who jumped us before they lived long enough to tell the difference. And the remaining two Flight members Clarissa and Felicity carried extra lance batteries, having two more of the armored conformal flasks with their dense arrays of sullen, runes along their torsos. The rest of us only had four. Those pods contributed to the bodice comments Telephe Ritual Plate earned.
I exhaled and debated taking a sip on my drinking tube. The chatter from my Flight was subdued. We were thinking it would not be long before we were called to help put out some brush fire. Though the Fomor was starting to learn that congregating large numbers would start a timer before something heavy was set their way.
Instead, we were to be sent to strike the most High Value of targets.
++++
We had expected the Titan to attack the Svartalfheim embassy. It was a fixed position closer to the Lake and thus to the Fomor's main body, their lines of communication, and supply. It was also where the artillery batteries that had shelled the Fomor's beach landings was positioned.
The Embassy formed a lynchpin to much of the East-West defensive line. With enough defense in depth, it served as a landing zone for our largest transports ever since the initial drop. Meaning the embassy had been reinforced by many flights of Pugio VTOLs filled with armored vehicles, munitions, supplies, and Tormentas of artillery.
There were at least 2 reinforced Arachne batteries at the Embassy. They were serving as one of the main fire-support reserves. Unlike the artillery units with the Cohorts closer to the front, which had to constantly change position, these could provide persistent support and had a greater number of tubes to call upon. And since they were not moving they could have a greater number of shells to call upon.
But with the strategic risk of providing a centralized, mostly fixed asset. Despite assurances from the boffins to a lack of Fomor capability, counter battery fire was an evergreen concern.
The grapevine that quietly chattered through our dispatchers in Flight Ops back on the Valhalla even whispered a few Torpedo ground launchers might have been deployed. Which seemed an odd spending of cargo capacity, but that was the rumor.
Regardless, no sensible commander would push through and leave a fortified position like that in her rear. As long as the Embassy stood, it was a prickly firebase that could hit the flank and rear of the Fomor lines as they advanced southward and westward.
Thus there were mutters when the calm voice of the too young sounding Flight Ops in our ears informed us that the Titan came with a Fomor Host of at least 7 unruly cohorts. Though there were 5 more immediately behind that reserve, bringing to a reinforced legion strength.
We had expected her to be at the front of an attack. But not quite the target she had picked.
In the Imperatrix's name, we had fought enough House wars to guess the overall strategy. The Fomor had numbers. They had ground troops, They even had an impressive number of combat casters, about a Mage Company in support. But without the Titan they had a severe deficiency in heavy ordnance.
The Boffins, Librarians, and Legates wanted her to take the Field.
And they got their wish, but war is a Democracy, the enemy gets a vote.
I exhaled and glanced over the Display projected from my eye-lenses. Systems, enchantments, and spirits were nominal. Power was good and the Flasks for my Lances were steady.
A simple chime went off on our com channel; that indicated deployment orders, and the young Flight Coordinator started talking in a crisp, calm official voice that was far from the more openly playful tone she used when giving gossip.
Instead of hitting the prepared lines of the Embassy, the Titan was attacking from the North on the western part of our lines, far from the lake.
Her target, the 12th Legion Severitas which had been attempting to flank around and contain the Fomor's inland, and possibly northern, expansion.
The too calm, too young-sounding, she was probably only a few years out of the academy, dispatcher directed our squadron. Of course she was calm, her position was somewhere deep inside the Valhalla's Combat Center.
It sounded like the 12th Legion's Sarpedona suits were providing airborne intelligence, unless there was a Occultia Surveillance RP Suit observing. With more emphasis on veils and an Euryale Scrying system that put my Gorgon rig to shame, and less on weapons, the Occultia was one of the most expensive Ritual Plate patterns.
Which was saying something.
Moreso it took a special kind of mind, above and beyond being able to bond and manage the Zeprhy to handle, organize, and broadcast, the torrent of far-roaming data the Euryale Scrying system took in.
I could find targets, enemies, ground conditions and transmit those to the rest of my Flight, or squadron if need be, even back to the Valhalla, but that was an augment to my strike role. For an Occultia Pilot, her job was to take in the entirety of a front and pre-process the results tagging things of interest to give the Boffins a head start. It was nearly a magnitude of difference in the level of data collected.
Squadron commander Prefect Vorenta gave the order, and we dropped in altitude and started accelerating. After leveling off at a building-buzzing height, we soon surmounted the sound barrier. Other squadrons followed but I concentrated on the dispersal of ours and terrain and target tracking ahead for my Flight.
The four of us were in a diamond formation with Primus GreenBlade in the lead, myself following at her left, and Felicity and Kelly with their extra evocation capacity were on right and aft position respectively.
We were given a lopsided trajectory to follow that would allow for us to accelerate and come in at different angles and at nearly the same time.
Already supersonic, our arc would have us close in, myself, Valerie, and Celeste would confirm the targeting data, that is the Titan. We would fire our Lances and then flicking in sharp turns we would race past, our course never directly passing overhead of the target.
We could then regroup and make for another acceleration, lock-on, attack, and turning run.
Or that was the plan.
Streets, buildings, and blocks raced past us as we closed in. Operationally fighting with our air assets this close to the city was almost like fighting in a water closet. You had to be careful with your wings when you turned.
All of us had a scrying setup that gave a bit of distorted vision with the forward targets looking closer than they really were. However the Gorgon rig made it worst for me.
And that was why within less than a minute of getting our strike orders, I caught sight of a Titan taking on a Legion.
Legions do not fight in neat rows and blocks. That's just for the parade ground. House wars involve combating other succubae. Organized militaries where the basic hoof-slogger has flight, some regeneration, and at least a basic skill in magic. Not to mention that every House that can defend its territory has some form of heavy weapons, indirect fire, and air power.
Thus forces have to be dispersed when possible. Urban combat is worse than an open-field battle in that regard, given how buildings limit avenues of movement and the terrain can be even more broken and littered with choke points.
Thus it was not easy to estimate how much of the 12th Legion remained.
Furthest away from us were the shredded remains of what might have been Infantry Cohort or at least enough Nymphs, Mules and bodies. More than the distance, it was hard to get an idea as an entire group of intersections and surrounding buildings had been blown apart. Not to mention the Fomor was trying to advance, with great difficulty, through that area.
Time spiraled down. My attention went ahead of the beaten zone and spotted the Titan herself.
She was hard to miss.
Head and shoulders taller than anyone else even at this distance her beauty shone in the night. With skin of gleaming bronze, her silver hair flew behind her. Ethniu strode as demon empress, a goddess of old. One eye glinted emerald, while the other was swollen and burned an angry red.
The Eye.
The Eye of Balor.
My suit automatically tripped its heating elements to reduce the chill and my Zephyr picked up on my agitation and my thrust increased a bit as our formation kicked in that much more acceleration.
It helped distract some of my attention from what the Titan was doing.
++++
"Everyone thank Valentina for pointing her out," our Flight leader GreenBlade laconically said as I fed the targeting data to the rest of my Flight. "Lock target; Charge Lances."
I extended my arms as the runes inscribed on my gauntlets flared as the accumulators took in the power from evocation capacitors, the 'flasks" stored around my waist in armored conformal bands that made up my "bodice armor".
Massive, devastating energy transferred from their relatively stable and quiescent storage accumulators to the Lances themselves. In a few seconds they would be a roiling, ardently-flensing power ready to fire.
The Titan had support, perhaps a Century or two of the long-limbed yet bulky warriors the Fomor seemed to like and a squad or two of disturbingly-amphibious-seeming casters.
But she seemed to ignore her escort as she strode forward.
Minerva rotary cannons were not intended for continuous long-term fire. It used too much ammunition and it was better to hit a target then move to the next. Instead I saw no less than a dozen of those guns, on Scorpions, Mules, Nymphs, and Vestals lancing out constant streams of fire.
The First Cohort was double-size and populated by veterans. They seemed to have... at least the bulk of their strength. For now.
Vel missiles launched, mortars fired. Ground attack Ritual Plate circled about and lighting and fire burst out. Not to mention hundreds of rifles and dozens of machine guns. Most of the fire was controlled.
However, most of the time she was too close to a Legionary Position for Arachne to hit her. And it did nothing to slow her.
A cynic might point out that being taken out by our own artillery might be a kinder fate for the Legionaries. The titan was not always quick with her kills. Various golems had been used in a screening role as the remove combat vehicles could be more readily sacrificed and there were nearly drifts of mangled Scorpions.
I focused on keeping the targeting info up to date and sending it to my Flight and the rest of the Squadron.
"Mark the bitch, hit her, then turn. We're the cavalry, we'll get another run" GreenBlade assured.
Our of seeming frustration, Legionaries had adjusted targets and savaged her escorts. The casters tried to put up shields, their heavies tried to take some cover, but a level of fire that their Empress could laugh off scythed through them. More managed to brave the lines in an attempt to support their liege, only to be cut down.
At this airspeed the telescopic view from of the Gorgon rig was more like a collection of snapshots. The imagery rapidly flashed by each a snapshot, each a moment in the battle. It would overwhelm, or at least distract a normal pilot, but we were trained to take in, compartmentalize, and separate vast data.
Maybe not as much as an Occultia Pilot, but unlike them, we were expected to gather intelligence and fight.
The Centuries withdrew by fire team. Their mules and Scorpions were often used to cover their retreats, the remote-operated vehicles being far easier to sacrifice.
She advanced. She could only be in one place, so most got out before she could reach them. The only time she ran was when she sprinted to try and catch any groups that tried to flee instead of fighting to the last.
The Eye fired in angry beams that burned to look at, even through the Gorgon feed. Wards on one Vestal Scout tank held for a moment before popping like a soap bubble and burning through armor. The beam cut through the heavy smoke the vehicles grenades were popping off which at least got time. Releasing their own smoke, the other two in the formation had quickly reversed to behind a building and managed to continue their harassing fire.
The dispersed formation kept it from being a total slaughter. Scout Tanks, Nymphs, Legionaries, even Umbra Medium VTOLs burned. But they were too far apart, the defense in depth was too deep for any attack to kill all of the First Cohort.
The vast majority of the Legionaries managed to withdraw. It was the unlucky or the slower or the brave who got hit. They might not be able to stop the Titan, but she was not able to kill with impunity.
The heaters in my suit kicked on a bit more as we closed in. The next few seconds added more detail to the battlefield. I hoped the bowfins were learning from this. I hoped they could separate the horror and make tactical choices.
We had fought powerful beings before. We were part of a strike that took out the 6th Daughter of Grand Admiral Trosier. However, the attack against Virgox the 2nd Eldest daughter of Luxon was less successful. I had personally struck a blow to her, but she did not fall that day.
But this was an inexorable power. The blood and screams were more than even the most intense cauldron, and it was not even, yet, a rout.
"Confirm Lances are free and charged. Max power," GreenBlade stated, her voice utterly professional. Only a few seconds had passed since her last statement. The intention was to use the majority of our power in one Lance strike.
The Titan was also just the center of the battle. The 12th Legion Severitas had 7 more cohorts and they flanked the flagging First Cohort. These were Cohorts of high mobility on Medium VTOLs, more Infantry Cohorts, another light Tank Cohort, and a headquarters unit with artillery and Ritual Plate and other assets.
For the enemy, spreading behind the titan was the Fomor host, roughly 7 Cohorts. Various warbands of human, Fomorian, tentacular, ape-like and various other horrors were pressing. They had more Cohorts of reinforcements coming aright behind them
The battlefield was a quick teacher and they had learned to not group up. While their Mistress could kill any in her sight, she was in only one spot.
Naturally, the Fomor tried to follow behind her.
Across the grave of the luckless Infantry Cohort Ethniu first destroyed, the Fomor attempted an advance.
I say attempted because behind the Titan was a curtain barrage of no less than 2 Arachne batteries. The beaten ground destroyed the dead of that Cohort, but it also thinned out and shattered the Fomor attempting to back up the titan.
This made it so they have to brave that line and cross the barrage and accept the mass casualties, or flank and hit Cohorts that were not being ravaged by the Eye, or wait for the artillery to run out of munitions, or for the Titan to get to those guns.
A two-tone warning chine came over our comm channel.
We had fought powerful beings before, and their main limit was they could only be in one place, they needed conventional troops to exploit breakouts and weaknesses.
The First Cohort of the 12th Legion was dying by inches but it was costing the Fomor for every step.
And then we came in range.
Maybe a minute had passed since the target disposition alert chimed on our communications channels.
My tail adjusted as I trimmed my wings back. Ethniu was terrible and mighty The Gorgon feed made it look like I could reach out and touch her.
And then I did.
The Runes on my gauntlets spilled out beyond my fists. The lenses to my helmet automatically dimmed.
Two blue-white beams of antic power stabbed out from me to the Titan. Each as thick around as my thigh, the lances were joined by the pair GreanBlade fired and four brighter, waist-thick beams Felicity and Kelly and their more powerful evocations had launched
But we were just 1 Flight, of 4 Squadrons.
Nearly a hundred blue-white lances of pulsing destructive power were slammed into the Titan. We came in at different angles and altitudes but our coordination, and training, made it so nearly all hit her, and at almost the exact time.
One moment the Titan stood there her armor shining and her silver hair flying behind her like a banner. She was mid-stride one foot up.
The next moment she was consumed by blue-white beams. Aimed at the right spot a Lance could take out a battleship. It could rend an enemy formation, spear reinforced bunkers. A dozen could overload airship-grade warding shields. And we hit her with a hundred Lances.
Each beam flickered out for less than a second but delivered enough energy to cover her in blinding light as the street boiled around her.
The beams that missed cut through the ground gouging trenches that radiated around her in a flaming starburst. There were a few burned out vehicles and even an overturned truck behind the Titan.
Our attack angles had been set so that any missed shots would hit the Fomor lines instead of ours. The handful of near misses from our attack rendered two Century's worth of Fomor supporting the Titan into smoking ruined meat. Some had used the vehicles to take cover. Some had held a bit further back and tried to use some of the smoldering buildings as cover.
The Lances burned through all of that.
The lucky ones were consumed into charred husks, the unlucky had only parts of their bodies hit by the Lances, leaving burning flailing remnants that slumped the ground.
The Titan herself staggered. Her upraised foot quickly went back and she stumbled as the Lance-light faded revealing metal skin that pinged and shimmered from the heat. An attack that had set the asphalt roadway and concrete sidewalks aflame left her form pristine, save for a drop of blood that trickled down one nostril.
"Break, break, break!" GreenBlade shouted. Zephyr shrieked as our Flights snapped in their turns and started accelerating away from the Titan.
+++
Screaming in affront, another few drops of blood trickling down from her nose, Ethniu raised her gaze. The Eye sliced through the sky.
The 12th Legion's Ground Support RP launched their own attack in an attempt to distract her and cover their infantry's withdrawal.
Our formations spread out and each Flight and took a different vector. The venomous hateful crimson beam scythed through us, as we maneuvered and jinked, but better a handful of Ritual Plate than entire Centuries.
My suit chilled as I and the other Gorgons fed telemetry to the Squadrons. The Eye's path of destruction was overloaded with a flared cone showing the areas of most risk.
There were a few screams on the line as some Pilots were unlucky enough to fall under her immediate gaze. To even see us at this distance in such an awful night showed impressive far-seeing as she tried to knock more of us out.
The beam might be all-powerful but we had fired at maximum range which meant the Eye had a massive half-hemisphere of sky to cover to get all of us. And with every moment we got further and further from her.
The Titan then whipped her head and the Eye flicked towards us.
My heart pounded. "Incoming," I intoned pinging the lower port octant the Eye's attack was coming from.
The Titan's gaze was not a flexed thing, she twitched and adjusted her gaze in response to our maneuvering. Zephyr flared and wings twisted.
I idly noticed the Arachne Artillery had started hitting her directly, but the Titan could not be dissuaded.
Kelly was still in the aft position of our dispersed formation. She suddenly pulled her wings in and dropped beneath the Eye its power just burning her tail. We has spread out so that the Titan should not be able to get all of us, and even if she could the other Flights would make it out.
Felicity followed and twisted but the Eye lifted and speared right through her.
Her scream was shortly lived as her flesh and armor cooked and the psychic backlash from her dying Zephyr hit us.
The imagery and sensations burned into my mind as I rolled over and pushed my Zephyr until the air spirits screamed. Flicking up a wing I rolled over and shifted.
The coldness of my suit suddenly turned to fire as my left wing caught the force of the Eye's Wrath. That entire side was baked and my arm blistered within the armor and the remaining two-thirds drained evocation flasks automatically discharged.
I screamed and the displays went off as my enchantments flicked and I started to fall.
Looking over I saw the Eyes' beam rise up attempting to go after GreenBlade. And then the flasks detonated.
They gave a couple flat thumps that knocked the air out of my chest. I tried to exhale and concentrated. My right arm went to my throat and flicked the armor under my pectoral to hit the manual restart.
The good news was that I could feel my Zephyrs had survived the hit.
There was a hum and the enchantments started to power back up. I concentrated on the spell and the growing line of runes at the bottom of my field of view.
Only then did I look back down to confirm how much altitude I still had.
The dark city rushed up.
Wincing I slowly spread my right wing and started to catch some air. Angling my tail to the left side kept me from entering a spin, but it would be enough to slow down.
Not with half of the joints to my left wing simply gone and the remaining membranes cut to ribbons. Fortunately, I was a Ritual Plate Pilot.
The first thing a pilot had to be able to do was bond with and direct air spirits.
And my Zephyr, while shaken, were alive.
After confirming that my collection of spirits could slow my airspeed I started to look for a landing spot.
Several buildings below me still stood. There was a variety of sizes. Alas I was a bit too far south of the lines and I could not see any friendly forces within range.
Upside, a hard restart was all my Gorgon rig needed to be restored.
Striking a balance between defensibility and observability and egress I quickly evaluated the available landing areas.
And I aimed for the largest flattest roof I could see.
Time was short, and my Zephyr were already bleeding off speed and helping my remaining wing nudge me along. They pushed to slow me down, but increasing thrust was another factor.
The mercantile building was between twenty and thirty stories and had a broad roof with several heating and cooling structures atop. To one side was a round VTOL pad marked with an H.
I ended up landing near the edge and my knees bent taking in the weight as I leaned forward.
Air blew around me and I exhaled. It took a moment to get used to the feeling of ground beneath my armored boots.
I focused on the emergency landing procedure. After checking my perimeter and seeing that I was secure or at least isolated I then took stock.
My wounds were not crippling; I could mostly use my left hand, but I was flight ineffective. Having only one wing did that And there was a fair bit of pain along my torso where I had an explosion go off near me.
Once I was as reasonably sure I was not bleeding anywhere under my armor, or at least not heavily bleeding, I took an injection from the suit's medical pack. The numbing from the targeted analgesics was distracting but far less than the flensed wing, sheared bones, and bruised ribs.
Physically I could be better, even after I regrew my wing, my suit would need to be fixed.
And of my suit, I had no evocation flasks for my Lances, but I had my suite of conventional close-in and stand-off weapons. The Gorgon rig was already functional and my Zephyr were present if upset.
I sipped some water from the drinking tube and snapped open my helmet. Cold, smoky air brushed my face and nostrils as I opened a thigh compartment and started munching on a ration bar.
The helmet had a nutrition tube too, but compared to that "broth" even the most worn old chocolate wafer bar or bland jerky was far more palatable. I chewed thoughtfully, crushing a sugared energy gem between my teeth, thankful my maintenance crew stocked the good stuff as I checked the rest of my suit's systems
The Ritual Plate looked worse than it really was. The outer armor was scorched and there were dents and gouges in the matt grey material and dark blue steel brushed filigree, but the enchantments were solid enough. The biggest problem was that it, and myself, were down a wing.
I was not mono-focused. Getting lost in a status display on the battlefield was an easy way to get killed. Fortunately, I was a skilled multi-tasker, even by Pilot standards. And that's when the trouble started. It was one thing to look out over the ashen, deadened cityscape.
It was another to let the sensation of millions of terrified minds. My hands clenched, armored gauntlets starting to power up as I flexed my knees, the suit responded to my greater tension and I exhaled. This city was insane. It was huge, without power, without magic. Plunged into a nightmare of an unexpected invasion.
I focused on the Gorgon's systems. I could control that feed. There was less... emotion. Less leakage from all the poor people dumped into a battle to the knife, a world of tooth and claw.
I swallowed my snack, took some more water, and looked at the next part of the check list.
All that was left was to check my communication array. I flipped the channel and sending a ping to my Flight Coordination I wondered if the rest of my Flight had made it...
My shoulders shook as I remembered Felicity's screams and relived the echoes of feeling her die. I exhaled. It was not the first time we had lost people. I concentrated. "This is Volantes Centurion Valentina Orbez, 6th Squadron, 4th Wing."
++++
This voice from Flight Ops sounded a lot older to my ear. "This is Valhalla Flight Control, we read you. Condition?"
"Grounded, medically stable, position reasonably secure," I stated as I scanned around the roofline. It couldn't have been more than half a minute since I was hit. The battle was still going on. RP Squadrons were crossing the sky.
"I'm reading that your Gorgon is functional; can you resume telemetry?" There was a pause and before I could answer she came with another question. " Valentina can you confirm your location?"
"Yes Valhalla Flight, sending telemetry now." I then read off some map coordinates based on the building I had landed on.
There was another pause. "Can you get eyes on the Titan?"
Well. So much for getting a Spatha dispatched to pick me up. Yes the local airspace might not be the most safe environment, but if the Titan could be avoided...
But no, I had a mission. "Affirmative," I replied
I crouched a bit further down and made my way further north on the roof. Key was to get a comprehensive view but not silhouette myself. I was high up, but anyone with the right eyes could see someone if they stood on the edge of a roofline.
The Titan was impossible to miss. I was closer than the majority of our strike mission, and I was relatively stationary. Getting a lock on a titanic figure in the midst of combat was trivial.
She had advanced maybe halfway down the block and was now midway between intersections. At the moment no one stood before her, which meant the rain of artillery and Ritual Plate had intensified. It was enough to have her put the Eye's gaze skyward, but she was still advancing, and our forces were pulling back mostly behind lines of concrete debris, burned-out vehicles, and shattered brickwork that had been piled up.
The Fomor behind her had tried to keep up with her but their effort was desultory. The retreating First Cohort had created a concavity in our lines. And beyond the Titan's spearhead they had been unable to advance on the flanks.
I automatically split my focus and had the Gorgon Rig gaze further afield. The Svartalfheim embassy was eastward closer to the lake. I could see the flash of artillery in maniple strength as 4 Arachne batteries rotated through targets. Something that had to have been a ground launch torpedo shot into the air, and was followed by a storm of smaller Vel Missiles.
Interesting. Were the Fomor marshaling their remaining air-assets? Beyond the Embassy, to the North and even closer to the lake was where we estimated the Fomor had their main reserves and logistics support.
It was certainly where they had made landfall, and had dedicated a lot of troops to securing a cordon and lines of communication back to the beach. They had expended a lot of manpower to try to brave the beaches and move equipment and supplies across that zone.
More of my focus returned to Ethniu
I could not be the only one with a visual on the Titan. I suspected that there was likely at least one Veiled Forward Recon team in a dedicated spotter role. And there had to be at least one Occultia Pilot up there. The Valhalla had an entire Stealth Surveillance Squadron. And one Flight of that were Occultia.
But, if we were all at different orientations, and different altitudes... then the War College boffins and Librarians could triangulate and cross-check our data.
The First Cohort was pulling back under cover of the Arcana Engineers setting up a ward and swelling up the breastworks raising the height of the stone cover. The Eye had a cooldown period, but that only bought time.
The Engineer's portable Wards were intricate, expensive bits of kit designed to provide protection from air assaults and artillery. They only delayed the Eye slightly before their warding shields failed, but it was more time.
Though, in all technicality, even the thickest earthen barrier the geomancers raised up was merely concealment and not cover. So, far nothing had been able to stop the Eye's power, only slow it down.
By then the Fomor were starting to catch up and the Titan resumed her advance.
She bounded atop the concrete rubble barricade as two Centuries pulled back while their Marius Mules on remote control with Minerva rotary guns opened up. It did little to slow her but it was enough to allow several squads of Alpinum in their ceramic armor to advance.
Assigned to the 12th by BlackSky herself, they were the Legate's personal guard and advanced troops. That the 12th's commander was not there, and instead the attack was being commented by a willowy-ripcord-thin, flat-eyed Tribune wielding an equally slender sword did not speak well for the Legate's current condition.
Seeing the troops, the Titan smiled, her ethereally beautiful features twisted in cruel pleasure. "Finally! Enough running! You half breeds are abandoned. This is not your-"
And then a Vestal scout tank's main guns hit her in the chest and neck.
She let out a howl of anger, more upset at being interrupted than for any impact of the enhanced armor-piercing rounds on titanic bronze. She then jumped down and raced through the withering fire of the Alpinum Guard from across the street. "Then die, you rude Swine!" the Titan screamed with such volume that I did not need my Gorgon rig to hear her.
"Keep focus," Flight Ops said in my ear.
And then in a teleport flash followed a blinding arc like the first rays of the rising sun shot across the titan and her supporters. As smaller flashes flared around her, a tall pale figure with glossy black hair, curling horns, gold wings, and a black armored gown slammed into the Titan at just the right angle to knock her back onto the barricade.
The imperious figure was slimmer than her mother, but retained much of her regal bearing as she took the Tribune's long sword. The steel lit up, the entire blade glowing with a bright golden light as the air around it shimmered with heat.
Behind the figure, the minor flashes had revealed the matt-black light-armored figures of the Broadcast Recon troops. who had teleported in with the Daughter.
Ethniu looked down at the demoness with mocking grin. "Finally. I thought your breed were nothing but cowards. Who stands before me?"
The black-haired demon gave a thin smile. "Praetor Peregrinus DawnStrike. Before your father imprisoned you, I was conquering worlds at Mother's side. This petty host, this tantrum, goes no further. You will not advance."
++++
Sizing up DawnStrike, the Titan laughed. "Bold words." And then the light of the Eye shot out.
Instead of consuming the Praetor, there was a golden flash as she swept her sword, stepping inside of the beam's arc. Sunlight lit up the battlefield like a barrage of star-shells and the Eye's wrathful crimson power gouged through the golden ward raised in the sword's wake.
But by then DawnStrike was past the attack.
The Titan turned her head and the Praetor continued to turn, to the larger woman's side and slashed up with the tip of the luminous incendiary blade.
Moving with an even quicker blinking speed, Ethniu still screamed as the empowered sword kissed the side of her hip, leaving a flaming line of bubbling blood.
"You!" she screamed.
"Ah, well I was told someone with sufficient divine, or infernal, power could wound you." DawnStrike gave a little salute with the sword. "Let us see which I am."
Behind the Praetor the First Cohort continued to... evacuate. Broadcast Recon troops that had arrived with DawnStrike were helping teleport others further out and rebuild lines. The barrages on the Fomor Cohorts intensified making sure no one could get to their Mistress. It was all a continuation of previous retreats, but with more resources and organization.
And with a Daughter taking up the full attention of the Titan.
Ethniu had screamed and pounced at DawnStrike, the sword almost opened up her arm but she turned nearly gabbed into the demoness the Eye burst into ravening light and -
DawnStrike vanished in a golden flash.
She reappeared behind the Titan and yanked her hair back and down and tried to spear through her neck with the sword tip.
The blade creased the Titan's neck as she twisted, her sliver hair trying to tear out of the Praetor's hands. Turning, the Titan crouched at the knees and grabbed one of DawnStrike's arms and twisted. The was a snapping sound as she tried to backhand her away.
Yelling, DawnStrike smashed the sword against the taller woman's face, on the side without the Eye of Balor. There was another sunburst and the newly half-blind Titan tried to grapple the shorter woman but there was another flash as she teleported away.
"Coward! You are all callow and craven!" Ethniu screamed, seemingly trying to sight with the Eye itself.
While snapping her arm back into place, DawnStrike appeared to her blind side and tried to stab through the Titan's torso. Her green, mundane, eye regained focus and Ethniu flickered back as the sword just missed her.
"You are too slow," the Titan crowed as she stomped forward. The Eye flashed again and DawnStrike dodged and brought up the blade's light.
This time the golden ward shattered and the sword was immolated, for a bare moment turning into a lightly enchanted Legate's blade before it boiled away.
As the Titan tried to grapple with her, DawnStrike's tail went up slicking long fingers for the taller woman's trouble. Claws extended and both hit as DawnStrike tried to go under the floating ribs on the back of side far from the Eye, and the Titan simply flicked her wrist, the blade of her hand slamming into the Praetor's torso,
A bit of blood sprayed out DawnStrike's lips as she teleported further back.
"You lack commitment. If you had stayed you could have cut me deeper." Ethniu smirked and rubbed the small scratches on her side.
"And where in your sad life of imprisonment did you learn that?" DawnStrike laughed.
Ethniu charged her and the Eye of Balor burned. DawnStrike managed to evade but I gasped as her right wing just barely avoided the blast. The Fomor cohort a block behind DawnStrike did not far so well.
"Do not lose contact with the Titan," Flight Ops ordered, her tone clipped and urgent over the transmission.
"Mother knows the depth of my commitment," the Praetor said as the Titan tried to close and land another blow with immense fists.
"Where is your precious Mother? She abandons you like this!" Ethniu kicked out and managed to connect and there was a crunch in DawnStrike's midsection. More blood came out as DawnStrike caught Ethniu's right wrist, twisted and, using her entire body, turned it over and bent her hand back. With a burst of strength that flashed golden light down the street, she snapped it.
Ethniu screamed and held the broken wrist.
"Pain is new to you. Is it not?" Gasping, DawnStrike smiled.
"You will suffer. I will wear you down and when you can't run, when you realize your precious Mother sent you out here to die, then you will have oblivion." The baleful gaze from Ethniu's green eye was almost as hateful and intense as from the Eye of Balor
Looking behind the Titan, confirming that the Legions had withdrawn, the Praetor laughed. "I pity you, you have no one behind you. No one to trust. So much pride that you have to do everything yourself."
Ethniu charged and the Eye flashed.
DawnStrike teleported away, and then a 3 tone chime came over my communications channel.
The one that meant incoming Torpedo strike.
+++
The Fujiwara Aerial Torpedo was one of the main forms of power projection in the Household Fleet. Squadrons of Mace Torpedo Destroyers guarded the troop and armor transports and fleet cargo ships. And every RP carrier larger than a Mellona Medium had at least a few Torpedoes.
But the bulk of those 2.7 ton, 26 foot, missiles were dedicated to fleet defense with some for ground support. Which in light of the Fomor's negligible airborne and anti-air assets meant those munitions were basically dead-weight.
And while most of the Valhalla's torpedoes were for Fleet Defense; as an Avalon class heavy carrier, she had 48 torpedoes. Which gave plenty of space for ground support and other strike assets. The Battlecruiser HFV DarkStar was also lurking about. It had participated in the initial shore bombardment and rumor was that the DarkStar was using its stock of Madhu's Trident aquatic torpedoes and compliment of Torpedo Boats/Bombers in an anti-submarine warfare role.
Not to mention Landing Fleet had a Bombardment Flotilla with 2 Maul torpedo Cruisers in the fleet, each with 40 torpedoes and a Pike Torpedo Boat Tender that carried half a squadron of the quick, lethal craft.
Part of the barrage was too fast to follow. Even the Gorgon rig had a hard time getting a visual lock on something with a terminal speed over thrice the speed of sound. I managed to get enough data to tentatively identify one set of torpedoes. The other set was traveling far slower and was easier to identify.
Four supersonic shipkillers detonated just above the Titan. The Ascalon was a standard dual-purpose 700 lb warhead designed to pierce capital ship wards and puncture armor. The alchemically treated explosives were lensed foreword into incendiary jets as the backwash from the torpedo's detonations leveled the city block around their impact site.
The Titan was consumed as massive explosions shot through her and turned the area she stood upon into a crumbling crater.
The other torpedoes were slower and instead of hitting one target spread out along the entire line of battle. The Gae Bulg was a nasty bit of ordnance. A subsonic Torpedo, it exchanged reduced range for increased payload capacity. Instead of a single warhead, it carried over 150, 2 lb barbed sub-munitions. Though that was only half of the anti-infantry damage. The bomblettes were released just Surtalogi fuel air torpedoes also detonated. in incendiary clouds.
Nearly two dozen of these ground support weapons fell along the Fomorian lines. Much of a cruiser's loadout. There were also Log Mor anti-vehicle torpedoes. Like the Gae Bulk, the Log Mor had a heavier payload, but instead of a mass of smaller bomblettes, it only released 2 dozen larger Plumbata penetrators. These were designed to pierce armored vehicles and had independent targeting.
The Fomor did not have any such assets. I supposed the Notus spirits guiding those munitions went for whatever large or high value targets they could hit with extreme overkill. And because the Fleet Ordnance Department were pyromaniacs, the Log Mor also had an incendiary over blast.
Dealing with mortars, artillery and Ritual Plate had given the Fomor some experience in the importance of dispersion and dealing with air attacks. But even an Arachne battery pummeling your lines is a pale comparison to a heavy Torpedo strike.
It was like watching a few grid squares on a tactical map being swept clean.
The street was utterly obliterated as the Fomorian host had its heart ripped out and most of its lines cut down. Their reserves, as those further away from our lines, got some of the worst of it and were hit by overlapping firestorms until a crater similar to the one that had buried the Titan had formed.
And then the 12th Legion's entire Arachne maniple resumed firing at the Fomor that had managed to survive the Torpedo bombardment and had decided to move in some way.
"COWARDS!" the Titan screamed as she clawed her way out of the crater. It looked like her wrist had healed. Once at the crater's lip, her eye swept in a low arc as she circled her gaze. The First Cohort had used DawnStike's fight to pull to a safe distance. They might not have been out of range of the Eye but they were out of Torpedo range.
The Fomor Host shattered. Some with maddened fury or bleak resignation tried to charge the 12th, but more simply fled. Both were hit by the might of a Legion with full support. Ritual Plate Squadrons took out Lance attacks on larger concentrations and Sarpedona used conventional evocations to burn the Fomor. The RP squadrons left the largest groups for the occasional Torpedo to neutralize.
The smart ones stayed put, or moved to the nearest cover and hunkered down.
I shivered and focused the telemetry on the Titan. But I wondered where DawnStrike had gone to. For that matter where was BlackSky?
The three tone notice chimed again.
"Face ME! You COWARDS!" The Titan's frustrated anger threatened to break the heavens. And then the Eye tried to track the sky, there was an explosion above her followed by an overlapping crescendo as more ordnance fell upon her.
Even if she could take out a Torpedo, it would be very unlikely she'd be able to hit a Mothership. Not only were our larger fleet assets kept at standoff range for that reason, but Torpedoes could be launched from Hasta Torpedo Bombers or the Kolibri Torpedo Corvette. Not to mention that the large aerial munitions could take an indirect path to their target with dog-legs and other evasions.
Each detonation was smaller but the Torpedoes were harder to track, these were the
Gungnir which was a stealthy shipkiller that came in under a powerful veil. That stealth capacity came at a great expense in components and took up mass, reducing the warhead size Maybe the Eye could see those coming in, maybe not.
They still hit the Titan.
Alongside those was a series of teleport flashes a bare handful of stories above her that immediacy tuned into explosions. The Hrunting was an even more expensive "shipkiller" that had a high-accuracy, short-range, one-shot teleportation enchantment. The fiscal expensive of this strike was breathtaking. The teleport runes inscribed into the torpedo's body allowed the weapon to simply avoid most of the target's defenses, and simply appear as close as possible, at full velocity.
For the Titan's face this was, in missile terms, right next to her face.
++++
The entire block was now a blasted moonscape resembling the more desolate parts of Lantia.
The Fomor had just lost roughly a Legion's worth in casualties, about seven thousand various troops. Maybe half were dead, but the survivors had lost all cohesion and organization as fighting formations. Most of them were wounded and showed. And if they did not move quickly they would not get the chance to get organized, or into cover.
I idly wondered how many Torpedoes the Fleet had left. This many war shots had to have at least dented our ground support capability. Even a Bombardment Flotilla would be rapidly breaking out reloads from their supporting cargo ships.
Though I supposed with a dearth of enemy air assets or capital vessels we had plenty of shipkillers to lob at the Titan.
It was massively expensive, but so were squadrons of Ritual Plate or Cohorts of Legionaries.
Ethniu stood at the bottom of an uneven crater marred by collapsed tunnels and conduits. Dirty water had begun to flood into it in sprays and gurgles
The Titan was incandescent with rage as she stomped and splashed out of the crater once again.
As she neared the lip she hesitated and for a moment I wondered if the Titan would take cover. Instead she stood up and, proud as could be, she regained purchase on what could generously be called "street level".
Which nicely silhouetted her.
A full block away, DawnStrike appeared to her side and a golden beam of light shot down the broken avenue. The rubble lit up in sharp morning light, casting harsh shadows as the beam shot to the Titan.
Ethniu dodged but there might have been a weariness to her motion. And the beam adjusted, hitting the Titan in the chest and pushing her back.
She stumbled and one step went back past the lip of the crater and she started to stagger down the broken slope.
"You DARE mock ME!" Ethniu screamed and the Eye blasted out its hateful ray.
The Praetor vanished and reappeared to the other side of the crater and tilted her head. "Not from any great effort."
Ethniu gave an inarticulate rage-filled below and leapt across the crater trying to grapple with her.
Quirking an eyebrow, DawnStrike and gestured with her hand as if she were ordering in a wine bar and the clouds above thickened and a massive pillar of orange fire shot down slamming the Titan back into the crater.
The Eye shot up and raked over the lip of the crater in a circle. Buildings blew apart in a rough arc.
There were blasts of fire to the South that reflected off the clouds making them seem aflame. I could make out the hazy motions of Nyx stealth scouts and saw long lances of fire clearing an entire road of stalled vehicles. From my vantage point, I could barely make them out a couple dozen blocks or so, but CloudFire was among them. Another Daughter of the Imperatrix had arrived. Her eyes burned and her flaming hair billowed behind her with the magical bleed-off of the fiery pillar she had summoned at her sister's order.
The wards on the Lavin tanks shone as they raced down the road spreading their formation. It was not a stealthy approach, but given the smoldering fire to each warding shield I supposed CloudFire was trading stealth for protective power.
"You will NOT deny MY due!" The Titan screamed. "You interloping half breeds are nothing! You stand between me and a reckoning with the pitiful dregs of this world's divinity"
DawnStrike's green eyes turned flat. "You simpering Child. This is War. You bring your army to kill, to seize ground, to destroy your enemies. Here you ravage and pillage and offer no quarter. And you dare whine when we draw blood? When we refuse to treat this as some game?"
Racing up from behind our lines, the 23rd Legion Behemoth and its Battle Tanks were moving in to support the 12th Legion. I was not sure what even two dozen Lavin heavies would do against the Titan, but 24 tanks with their wards enhanced by Censor CloudFire? Plus their scouting vehicles, artillery, Ritual Plate, and Infantry support. That would at least slow the Titan down. Slow her enough for BlackSky and our allies to strike?
The Titan stomped back up the slope. The Eye glowed but did not fire. "You-"
DawnStrike cut the Titan off. "If you say cheater, I will be quite cross."
"Yes, you would hate to lose a bet, Dear Sister," a deeper resonant purring voice said as CloudFire appeared far down another street.
Her flaming orange and yellow hair was pulled back to where it flowed down the back of her armored gold and bronze dress. She stood with her immense hooves braced on the top deck of a battle tank that shimmered with intense wards and had a lowered ramming dozer blade. Three more tanks rumbled behind her in covering positions.
The Titan looked between the two Daughters.
"No you petulant child, you will not advance," DawnStrike patiently explained.
++++
Smirking, Titan stood to her full height. "You think these toys can stop me? The most you can do is bury me in rubble."
As her tanks raced around, CloudFire' laugh echoed over the broken landscape. "We can delay you; we can buy time. "
She gestured and the tank troop she was leading, plus three other quartets, a full Tank Swarm, that had gotten into position opened fire. The Lavin's 124mm shell was about 50 lbs. And 16 exotic armor-piercing enchanted variants hit the Titan in a storm of antic light and lashing flames that turned the ground into ash.
Half of the crater slumped apart into a fine heap of gritty sand that blew apart in a gritty cloud.
The battle tanks immediately revved their engines and withdrew leaving a gasping Titan scrambling as sparks and flames flickered over her metallic skin. Half of her silver hair had been melted off.
"We're not the ones afraid of morning, afraid of what will happen when Mortal Authorities arrive." DawnStrike's hands started to glow.
"But where is your mother? You fight here while she cowers..." The Titan paused and turned her head to the North-east.
My gaze went in that direction as the Gorgon rig locked onto a large teleport flash followed by... hundreds, no thousands of flashes. All along the Fomor's lines of communication back to the lake where the Fomor had their reserves and supplies. At least three thousand individual teleports.
A mass teleport. In theory sufficient skill could enable one to arrive and, using their own observations and the sensor feed from a whole cadre of ground and aerial scouts, teleport entire Cohorts of troops, vehicles, and support equipment. And to place each fire-team, rotary cannon, and tank in the exact spot for maximum devastation. And to do so while artillery and torpedoes launched supporting attacks.
It would take skill, coordination, and raw power on an unbelievable scale.
BlackSky had arrived.
And she had personally brought six cohorts with full support in a mass ambush the Fomor didn't see coming, an ambush they couldn't conceive of. One that could encircle the enemy, or at least cut off their line of retreat.
Contrary to her claims, the Titan's host was not an occupying force. For the Fomor this was a raid. And the most important part of a raiding mission was being able to break contact, exfiltrate, or at least retreat.
DawnStrike's smile was cold. "You wanted Mother's attention."
Ethniu screamed.
The Eye flashed towards Dawn. She teleported away; the clouds above coalesced as CloudFire summoned another fiery pillar that struck down. The Titan was briefly illuminated inside the roiling inferno. And then there was another three-tone alert.
My Gorgon rig was able to track these subsonic torpedoes. And from their giant monolithic explosions they were likely Galatine torpedoes. An inexpensive option, the Galatine eschewed most stealth, evasion, and advanced propulsion systems. Instead, it was a mere delivery system for over 800 lbs of high alchemical explosives.
Though expense was relative, for all the Torpedoes, Ritual Plate, Cohorts, and Armored Troops we might as well have been dropping pallets of millions of aurei on the Titan.
Some of the Lavin Battle Tanks, and their attendant infantry riding in Nymph light transports and Triarii IFVs had moved to support the Cohorts of the 12th Legion. The 23rd's LRI Cohorts were also arriving; Umbra Mediums deploying Infantry Centuries right to the battlefield.
Most of the 23rd's tanks were apparently the Lavin Mark 2 which had 2 Minerva rotary cannons in addition to a Metis heavy rotary cannon coaxial with the main gun which could also fire anti-infantry canister shot. With plenty of Infantry and RP support the shattered Fomor Formations were facing withering anti-infantry fire.
Even in the nightmare that was urban combat, without the Titan, the Fomor would have to count on an especially strong, brave, and creative sorcerer to even have a hope of slowing a Lavin.
The tanks advanced. And it seemed that the Fomorian inventory was light on anti-armor weaponry.
The third Torpedo barrage cleared. I wondered if the rotating through the types was testing to see which had the most effect on the Titan or was some commander dealing with the Fleet's finite supply of the heavy munitions.
DawnStrike had appeared further back closer but not quite near to her sister. Neither wanted to have both be able to be hit by the same blast from the Eye.
She simply spread her wings behind her and gestured "come forward" with her open hand.
The Titan's metal skin was no longer pristine; it had a rainbow patina that many metallic sheets got after an improper temper. The Titan took a step then a note of hesitation, of caution, crossed her face.
"Dither if you wish," the Praetor said. "It is not our forces who have daybreak as their enemy. Let Mother extinguish your minions, your allies, your supplies. I'm sure they'll accept such a betrayal with magnanimity."
"What do You know, Coward!" the Titan screamed. "You are interlopers here! This is not your world. They do not respect you."
Ethniu froze at DawnStrike's small smile.
Maybe. Maybe the other Accorded Nations did not respect us. But they knew how to use an opening. The Fae were another force of respectable skill in misdirection. If the Queen of Winter could not make use of an angered enemy myopically focused on another target that insisted on a harassing retreat, drawing the Titan further and further from the center of combat...
But it was not just faerie. It was said that the White Council's Wizards needed time for some great arcane working. And the Embassy was showing, only a fool would challenge the Svartalves on ground they had prepared.
And then there was Dame BlackStone. She had appeared time and time again; this was her city.
++++
Calculating the battle before her versus the one behind her, the Titan set her jaw. "Fomor! To me!" she screamed as the Eye's ravaging beam sliced across the battlefield.
There was a maddened howl as the remaining Fomorian forces launched themselves towards the Titan. Hordes of long-limbed muscular shaggy creatures, short be-tentacled ape-like things, amphibious Fomorians, and human levies all broke away from our lines and moved towards the Titan.
Their casualties were heavy. Seeing a force concentration, the Arachne barrage had intensified, which made me hope that Legion Behemoth also brought more artillery shells.
DawnStrike seemed perturbed while CloudFire simply cackled.
The pillars of fire slammed down from the sky as the Armored vehicles of 23rd Legion Behemoth advanced supporting the reinvigorated troops of 12th Legion Severitas. Keeping a clear dead zone they avoided pressing to the Titan.
The three-tone chime alerted and the Fomorian reinforcements were blasted by shipkiller torpedoes intended for the Titan. The monolithic high alchemy explosives blew through the enemy troops.
They may have been less efficient than with a dedicated ground-support weapon, but the results were devastating.
But then Ethniu was already gone.
"Valhalla Flight, this is Centurion Valentina the Titan is retreating," I gasped and paused to take a sip from my water tube. "Repeat. The Titan is Retreating."
There was a pause. "Understood," the young technician said her voice a pleased purr. "Do you have a bearing?"
"North-east direction. Contact track is highlighted. High ground speed," I transmitted as I had the Gorgon Rig follow the tall form as she ran down the blasted street. Some of her retainers tried to keep up, but they were quickly left in the dust.
"Understood," the crisp voice replied. "Keep visual as long as you can."
"Confirm." I zoomed out the scrying intake from the Gorgon rig. "She is rendezvousing with support elements. Estimate may reach BlackSky's area of operation in zero-four minutes. Longer if she abandons all support."
Though I wondered how long BlackSky and her cohorts would be there. The bit of attention I could spare to that part of the battlefield indicated things were winding down. Unless she was planning to ambush the Titan herself, BlackSky could withdraw in good order.
As Ethniu made it to what seemed to be a stacked concrete parking lot the Fomor had used as a staging point between their main supply dump and their line of attack on the 12th, The three-tone trill sounded.
And the entire building was blown to rubble. I gave a sharp grin as I transmitted that set of footage. If we had to burn the city to save it from the Fomor then so be it.
It was doubtful that that would kill or even wound her. But that was not the point.
The Titan had put much in her inevitability, her invincibility. That none could stand athwart her.
With that arrogance she had boasted to the Accorded Nations, announced her plans to invade, and hurled herself at the Legions.
And it was Ethniu who had fled, bloody and battered.
I drank some more water. And split my attention between tracking when the Titan dug her way out and the 12th and 23rd Legions' assault on the remaining Fomor.
Maybe now Valhalla Command could spare a Spatha VTOL to pick me up.
End "Snippet" 3.
Special thanks to especially preier for checking and reading over this. For ch13 I have over 4,500 words written and hte combat scene is going well.
So, given the previous two snippits were at the first of April and March.... I figured I could go for another.
Though.... we may be pushing the limit.
This is set futher into the whole Battle of Chicago.
And this time the POV is from a Household Fleet Telephe pilot
+++
Not one Step Further
The Titan was impatient.
She had grown tired of harassing attacks by the Legions and the systematic destruction of their scouts and Huntsmen. Probes had been repulsed and our forces had been able to land in good order.
Supposedly a band of Jotun had been routed by a Troop of Vestal Light tanks reinforced the Einherjar, 2 Senior Wizards, and Dame BlackStone. A human cemetery had been hit by a barrage from an entire artillery maniple after necromancy was discovered and Praetor DawnStrike assaulted it with a group of Broadcast Recon, and again Dame BlackStone was there.
As an Avalon class Heavy Carrier the HFV Valhalla held an entire Ritual Plate Group, nearly four hundred pilots. Including the Countess' Hellions, who were good enough Pilots for Legionaries.
We were the 6th Squadron of the 4th Wing of the 23rd Air Group in First Home Fleet. My Zephyr pushed me forward as my armored wings trimmed back. Scanning the ground that scrolled below us, I saw flickering fires and dark streets.
Human cities were not normally this dark. The Titan had changed that. All the power systems, electrical and magical had been destroyed in the Titan's first strike. Though with her own forces in the city, she seemed loath to repeat that tactic.
Along with our sisters of the 5th Squadron and the 8th Squadron of the 3rd Wing, we bore stolid Telephe Pattern suits. It was a legion joke that the Telephe had the best bodices of any Ritual Plate and the second most complimentary hip armor, especially the bomber variant.
The Telephe was less nimble than the Harmonia air superiority suit, but more agile than the Sarpedona ground support model which was about as close to a brawler as a high-speed enchanted armored suit could be.
Though tonight everyone not protecting fleet assets or escorting landing craft was in a ground support role. The War College Boffins and prim Librarians were not willing to write off the Enemy's anti-air capabilities. Enough of Fomor casters had ranged capabilities that could take out a suit that got too close or too slow.
And the Fomor started out the battle with an impressive number of small, but lethal squid-like fliers but, according to rumor, Dame BlackStone had rallied her own air troops to take them out. Which was mighty convenient if true.
Either way, the Boffins were only willing to strip down the fleet's protective squadrons so much to increase our ground support. There was a chance the Fomor had some sort of anti-air capability and our ships would be very vulnerable without their fighter screens.
In any case, the somewhat more lumbering Sarpedona were more than earning their keep in helping Infantry Cohorts pound Fomor ground positions. Again the Legionary Fliers were earning their keep.
In all honesty, our Telephe Ritual Plate was a heavier version of the Harmonia with elements of the Polydora all-arounder. Built with more warding and a stronger set of enchantments to have more forward thrust from the Zephyr and an increased power capacity for the evocation Lances, the Telephe was the primary long ranged strike platform.
Despite all that, we Telephe were not idle. The enemy had plenty of high-value targets: logistical hubs, command posts, arcanist spell-slingers, or simply troop concentrations that were valuable enough to warrant strafing by a strike squadron, but not valuable enough to get a Torpedo lobbed at them. Even a bombardment flotilla could run empty if the cruisers and torpedo bombers gave enough fire missions.
Our Squadron was currently circling in a large oval circuit midway between the city and the Valhalla as a ready deployment. The Valhalla was positioned well inland of the burning remains of a major airfield. A large number of the local's aircraft had gone down when the Titan had crippled the city's systems. It was harrowing to see so many large fuselages burning. Intact they must have been elegant, if brutishly large, planes.
Apparently, spare landing craft from the Valhalla and her escort ships were rendering aid, and dropping a couple engineering centuries.
Last we heard, the casters were trying to get some of the runways cleared. Either as a position in case our assets needed to land, or as a base for local reinforcements. We didn't know which way it would go. Rumor was that the indigenous fixed wing assets were incoming and Flight Ops was already coordinating.
Of the 12 of us in the Squadron, myself, Valerie, and Celeste were fitted with Gorgon scrying rigs. The joke was, since we had the largest horns, it fell on us to bear the burden of the enhanced sensor suites that clasped over our helmets and faceplates with extendable antennae and other enchantments.
In all seriousness, doctrine was to have one member of each Flight setup with Gorgon rigs. That was one thing I agreed with that bloodthirsty Legion Countess, the brass horns were dragging their hooves on pushing the next upgrade of our scrying systems. Her Demi-wing had already launched and there were rumors she was in the city's university district doing some sort of skullduggery with Broadcast Recon.
Still I made sure to make the most of our capabilities.
I had zoomed in on the dark street below, filling part of my helmet display. The eerie light that flickered closer to the shore and the low clouds of smoke had started to drift over. Fires from the airport were coming in from the other direction. Cars littered the road, so it had not been that full when the Titan released her pulse attack. I idly confirmed, that my scrying telemetry was being sent back to the Valhalla. While what I was looking at now did not seem to be any tactical value, it was good to confirm the system was working. And who knew what those clever girls could come up with.
The Gorgon's audio pickups were not perfect but it was enough to confirm the road below us was silent. The main noise was the thunder-like cracks of artillery towards the heart of the city.
That thought chilled me. That was a lot of heavy ordnance being used in a densely populated area. On the other hand we were a lot of heavy ordnance, and we had gone on three strike missions already with our suits just being refueled and rearmed.
My attention went up to the partial cloud cover. In the dark they were sullen shapes that reflected the fires beneath them and combined with the drifts of ash made it obvious how some of the Imperatrix's Daughters earned their names. My helmet Display helpfully gave an overlay of the various vessels.
The Flight Leader had more powerful, and difficult to control, Zephyr for greater maneuverability. Primus GreenBlade was not quite as agile as a Harmonia dancer, but she could take out anyone who jumped us before they lived long enough to tell the difference. And the remaining two Flight members Clarissa and Felicity carried extra lance batteries, having two more of the armored conformal flasks with their dense arrays of sullen, runes along their torsos. The rest of us only had four. Those pods contributed to the bodice comments Telephe Ritual Plate earned.
I exhaled and debated taking a sip on my drinking tube. The chatter from my Flight was subdued. We were thinking it would not be long before we were called to help put out some brush fire. Though the Fomor was starting to learn that congregating large numbers would start a timer before something heavy was set their way.
Instead, we were to be sent to strike the most High Value of targets.
++++
We had expected the Titan to attack the Svartalfheim embassy. It was a fixed position closer to the Lake and thus to the Fomor's main body, their lines of communication, and supply. It was also where the artillery batteries that had shelled the Fomor's beach landings was positioned.
The Embassy formed a lynchpin to much of the East-West defensive line. With enough defense in depth, it served as a landing zone for our largest transports ever since the initial drop. Meaning the embassy had been reinforced by many flights of Pugio VTOLs filled with armored vehicles, munitions, supplies, and Tormentas of artillery.
There were at least 2 reinforced Arachne batteries at the Embassy. They were serving as one of the main fire-support reserves. Unlike the artillery units with the Cohorts closer to the front, which had to constantly change position, these could provide persistent support and had a greater number of tubes to call upon. And since they were not moving they could have a greater number of shells to call upon.
But with the strategic risk of providing a centralized, mostly fixed asset. Despite assurances from the boffins to a lack of Fomor capability, counter battery fire was an evergreen concern.
The grapevine that quietly chattered through our dispatchers in Flight Ops back on the Valhalla even whispered a few Torpedo ground launchers might have been deployed. Which seemed an odd spending of cargo capacity, but that was the rumor.
Regardless, no sensible commander would push through and leave a fortified position like that in her rear. As long as the Embassy stood, it was a prickly firebase that could hit the flank and rear of the Fomor lines as they advanced southward and westward.
Thus there were mutters when the calm voice of the too young sounding Flight Ops in our ears informed us that the Titan came with a Fomor Host of at least 7 unruly cohorts. Though there were 5 more immediately behind that reserve, bringing to a reinforced legion strength.
We had expected her to be at the front of an attack. But not quite the target she had picked.
In the Imperatrix's name, we had fought enough House wars to guess the overall strategy. The Fomor had numbers. They had ground troops, They even had an impressive number of combat casters, about a Mage Company in support. But without the Titan they had a severe deficiency in heavy ordnance.
The Boffins, Librarians, and Legates wanted her to take the Field.
And they got their wish, but war is a Democracy, the enemy gets a vote.
I exhaled and glanced over the Display projected from my eye-lenses. Systems, enchantments, and spirits were nominal. Power was good and the Flasks for my Lances were steady.
A simple chime went off on our com channel; that indicated deployment orders, and the young Flight Coordinator started talking in a crisp, calm official voice that was far from the more openly playful tone she used when giving gossip.
Instead of hitting the prepared lines of the Embassy, the Titan was attacking from the North on the western part of our lines, far from the lake.
Her target, the 12th Legion Severitas which had been attempting to flank around and contain the Fomor's inland, and possibly northern, expansion.
The too calm, too young-sounding, she was probably only a few years out of the academy, dispatcher directed our squadron. Of course she was calm, her position was somewhere deep inside the Valhalla's Combat Center.
It sounded like the 12th Legion's Sarpedona suits were providing airborne intelligence, unless there was a Occultia Surveillance RP Suit observing. With more emphasis on veils and an Euryale Scrying system that put my Gorgon rig to shame, and less on weapons, the Occultia was one of the most expensive Ritual Plate patterns.
Which was saying something.
Moreso it took a special kind of mind, above and beyond being able to bond and manage the Zeprhy to handle, organize, and broadcast, the torrent of far-roaming data the Euryale Scrying system took in.
I could find targets, enemies, ground conditions and transmit those to the rest of my Flight, or squadron if need be, even back to the Valhalla, but that was an augment to my strike role. For an Occultia Pilot, her job was to take in the entirety of a front and pre-process the results tagging things of interest to give the Boffins a head start. It was nearly a magnitude of difference in the level of data collected.
Squadron commander Prefect Vorenta gave the order, and we dropped in altitude and started accelerating. After leveling off at a building-buzzing height, we soon surmounted the sound barrier. Other squadrons followed but I concentrated on the dispersal of ours and terrain and target tracking ahead for my Flight.
The four of us were in a diamond formation with Primus GreenBlade in the lead, myself following at her left, and Felicity and Kelly with their extra evocation capacity were on right and aft position respectively.
We were given a lopsided trajectory to follow that would allow for us to accelerate and come in at different angles and at nearly the same time.
Already supersonic, our arc would have us close in, myself, Valerie, and Celeste would confirm the targeting data, that is the Titan. We would fire our Lances and then flicking in sharp turns we would race past, our course never directly passing overhead of the target.
We could then regroup and make for another acceleration, lock-on, attack, and turning run.
Or that was the plan.
Streets, buildings, and blocks raced past us as we closed in. Operationally fighting with our air assets this close to the city was almost like fighting in a water closet. You had to be careful with your wings when you turned.
All of us had a scrying setup that gave a bit of distorted vision with the forward targets looking closer than they really were. However the Gorgon rig made it worst for me.
And that was why within less than a minute of getting our strike orders, I caught sight of a Titan taking on a Legion.
Legions do not fight in neat rows and blocks. That's just for the parade ground. House wars involve combating other succubae. Organized militaries where the basic hoof-slogger has flight, some regeneration, and at least a basic skill in magic. Not to mention that every House that can defend its territory has some form of heavy weapons, indirect fire, and air power.
Thus forces have to be dispersed when possible. Urban combat is worse than an open-field battle in that regard, given how buildings limit avenues of movement and the terrain can be even more broken and littered with choke points.
Thus it was not easy to estimate how much of the 12th Legion remained.
Furthest away from us were the shredded remains of what might have been Infantry Cohort or at least enough Nymphs, Mules and bodies. More than the distance, it was hard to get an idea as an entire group of intersections and surrounding buildings had been blown apart. Not to mention the Fomor was trying to advance, with great difficulty, through that area.
Time spiraled down. My attention went ahead of the beaten zone and spotted the Titan herself.
She was hard to miss.
Head and shoulders taller than anyone else even at this distance her beauty shone in the night. With skin of gleaming bronze, her silver hair flew behind her. Ethniu strode as demon empress, a goddess of old. One eye glinted emerald, while the other was swollen and burned an angry red.
The Eye.
The Eye of Balor.
My suit automatically tripped its heating elements to reduce the chill and my Zephyr picked up on my agitation and my thrust increased a bit as our formation kicked in that much more acceleration.
It helped distract some of my attention from what the Titan was doing.
++++
"Everyone thank Valentina for pointing her out," our Flight leader GreenBlade laconically said as I fed the targeting data to the rest of my Flight. "Lock target; Charge Lances."
I extended my arms as the runes inscribed on my gauntlets flared as the accumulators took in the power from evocation capacitors, the 'flasks" stored around my waist in armored conformal bands that made up my "bodice armor".
Massive, devastating energy transferred from their relatively stable and quiescent storage accumulators to the Lances themselves. In a few seconds they would be a roiling, ardently-flensing power ready to fire.
The Titan had support, perhaps a Century or two of the long-limbed yet bulky warriors the Fomor seemed to like and a squad or two of disturbingly-amphibious-seeming casters.
But she seemed to ignore her escort as she strode forward.
Minerva rotary cannons were not intended for continuous long-term fire. It used too much ammunition and it was better to hit a target then move to the next. Instead I saw no less than a dozen of those guns, on Scorpions, Mules, Nymphs, and Vestals lancing out constant streams of fire.
The First Cohort was double-size and populated by veterans. They seemed to have... at least the bulk of their strength. For now.
Vel missiles launched, mortars fired. Ground attack Ritual Plate circled about and lighting and fire burst out. Not to mention hundreds of rifles and dozens of machine guns. Most of the fire was controlled.
However, most of the time she was too close to a Legionary Position for Arachne to hit her. And it did nothing to slow her.
A cynic might point out that being taken out by our own artillery might be a kinder fate for the Legionaries. The titan was not always quick with her kills. Various golems had been used in a screening role as the remove combat vehicles could be more readily sacrificed and there were nearly drifts of mangled Scorpions.
I focused on keeping the targeting info up to date and sending it to my Flight and the rest of the Squadron.
"Mark the bitch, hit her, then turn. We're the cavalry, we'll get another run" GreenBlade assured.
Our of seeming frustration, Legionaries had adjusted targets and savaged her escorts. The casters tried to put up shields, their heavies tried to take some cover, but a level of fire that their Empress could laugh off scythed through them. More managed to brave the lines in an attempt to support their liege, only to be cut down.
At this airspeed the telescopic view from of the Gorgon rig was more like a collection of snapshots. The imagery rapidly flashed by each a snapshot, each a moment in the battle. It would overwhelm, or at least distract a normal pilot, but we were trained to take in, compartmentalize, and separate vast data.
Maybe not as much as an Occultia Pilot, but unlike them, we were expected to gather intelligence and fight.
The Centuries withdrew by fire team. Their mules and Scorpions were often used to cover their retreats, the remote-operated vehicles being far easier to sacrifice.
She advanced. She could only be in one place, so most got out before she could reach them. The only time she ran was when she sprinted to try and catch any groups that tried to flee instead of fighting to the last.
The Eye fired in angry beams that burned to look at, even through the Gorgon feed. Wards on one Vestal Scout tank held for a moment before popping like a soap bubble and burning through armor. The beam cut through the heavy smoke the vehicles grenades were popping off which at least got time. Releasing their own smoke, the other two in the formation had quickly reversed to behind a building and managed to continue their harassing fire.
The dispersed formation kept it from being a total slaughter. Scout Tanks, Nymphs, Legionaries, even Umbra Medium VTOLs burned. But they were too far apart, the defense in depth was too deep for any attack to kill all of the First Cohort.
The vast majority of the Legionaries managed to withdraw. It was the unlucky or the slower or the brave who got hit. They might not be able to stop the Titan, but she was not able to kill with impunity.
The heaters in my suit kicked on a bit more as we closed in. The next few seconds added more detail to the battlefield. I hoped the bowfins were learning from this. I hoped they could separate the horror and make tactical choices.
We had fought powerful beings before. We were part of a strike that took out the 6th Daughter of Grand Admiral Trosier. However, the attack against Virgox the 2nd Eldest daughter of Luxon was less successful. I had personally struck a blow to her, but she did not fall that day.
But this was an inexorable power. The blood and screams were more than even the most intense cauldron, and it was not even, yet, a rout.
"Confirm Lances are free and charged. Max power," GreenBlade stated, her voice utterly professional. Only a few seconds had passed since her last statement. The intention was to use the majority of our power in one Lance strike.
The Titan was also just the center of the battle. The 12th Legion Severitas had 7 more cohorts and they flanked the flagging First Cohort. These were Cohorts of high mobility on Medium VTOLs, more Infantry Cohorts, another light Tank Cohort, and a headquarters unit with artillery and Ritual Plate and other assets.
For the enemy, spreading behind the titan was the Fomor host, roughly 7 Cohorts. Various warbands of human, Fomorian, tentacular, ape-like and various other horrors were pressing. They had more Cohorts of reinforcements coming aright behind them
The battlefield was a quick teacher and they had learned to not group up. While their Mistress could kill any in her sight, she was in only one spot.
Naturally, the Fomor tried to follow behind her.
Across the grave of the luckless Infantry Cohort Ethniu first destroyed, the Fomor attempted an advance.
I say attempted because behind the Titan was a curtain barrage of no less than 2 Arachne batteries. The beaten ground destroyed the dead of that Cohort, but it also thinned out and shattered the Fomor attempting to back up the titan.
This made it so they have to brave that line and cross the barrage and accept the mass casualties, or flank and hit Cohorts that were not being ravaged by the Eye, or wait for the artillery to run out of munitions, or for the Titan to get to those guns.
A two-tone warning chine came over our comm channel.
We had fought powerful beings before, and their main limit was they could only be in one place, they needed conventional troops to exploit breakouts and weaknesses.
The First Cohort of the 12th Legion was dying by inches but it was costing the Fomor for every step.
And then we came in range.
Maybe a minute had passed since the target disposition alert chimed on our communications channels.
My tail adjusted as I trimmed my wings back. Ethniu was terrible and mighty The Gorgon feed made it look like I could reach out and touch her.
And then I did.
The Runes on my gauntlets spilled out beyond my fists. The lenses to my helmet automatically dimmed.
Two blue-white beams of antic power stabbed out from me to the Titan. Each as thick around as my thigh, the lances were joined by the pair GreanBlade fired and four brighter, waist-thick beams Felicity and Kelly and their more powerful evocations had launched
But we were just 1 Flight, of 4 Squadrons.
Nearly a hundred blue-white lances of pulsing destructive power were slammed into the Titan. We came in at different angles and altitudes but our coordination, and training, made it so nearly all hit her, and at almost the exact time.
One moment the Titan stood there her armor shining and her silver hair flying behind her like a banner. She was mid-stride one foot up.
The next moment she was consumed by blue-white beams. Aimed at the right spot a Lance could take out a battleship. It could rend an enemy formation, spear reinforced bunkers. A dozen could overload airship-grade warding shields. And we hit her with a hundred Lances.
Each beam flickered out for less than a second but delivered enough energy to cover her in blinding light as the street boiled around her.
The beams that missed cut through the ground gouging trenches that radiated around her in a flaming starburst. There were a few burned out vehicles and even an overturned truck behind the Titan.
Our attack angles had been set so that any missed shots would hit the Fomor lines instead of ours. The handful of near misses from our attack rendered two Century's worth of Fomor supporting the Titan into smoking ruined meat. Some had used the vehicles to take cover. Some had held a bit further back and tried to use some of the smoldering buildings as cover.
The Lances burned through all of that.
The lucky ones were consumed into charred husks, the unlucky had only parts of their bodies hit by the Lances, leaving burning flailing remnants that slumped the ground.
The Titan herself staggered. Her upraised foot quickly went back and she stumbled as the Lance-light faded revealing metal skin that pinged and shimmered from the heat. An attack that had set the asphalt roadway and concrete sidewalks aflame left her form pristine, save for a drop of blood that trickled down one nostril.
"Break, break, break!" GreenBlade shouted. Zephyr shrieked as our Flights snapped in their turns and started accelerating away from the Titan.
+++
Screaming in affront, another few drops of blood trickling down from her nose, Ethniu raised her gaze. The Eye sliced through the sky.
The 12th Legion's Ground Support RP launched their own attack in an attempt to distract her and cover their infantry's withdrawal.
Our formations spread out and each Flight and took a different vector. The venomous hateful crimson beam scythed through us, as we maneuvered and jinked, but better a handful of Ritual Plate than entire Centuries.
My suit chilled as I and the other Gorgons fed telemetry to the Squadrons. The Eye's path of destruction was overloaded with a flared cone showing the areas of most risk.
There were a few screams on the line as some Pilots were unlucky enough to fall under her immediate gaze. To even see us at this distance in such an awful night showed impressive far-seeing as she tried to knock more of us out.
The beam might be all-powerful but we had fired at maximum range which meant the Eye had a massive half-hemisphere of sky to cover to get all of us. And with every moment we got further and further from her.
The Titan then whipped her head and the Eye flicked towards us.
My heart pounded. "Incoming," I intoned pinging the lower port octant the Eye's attack was coming from.
The Titan's gaze was not a flexed thing, she twitched and adjusted her gaze in response to our maneuvering. Zephyr flared and wings twisted.
I idly noticed the Arachne Artillery had started hitting her directly, but the Titan could not be dissuaded.
Kelly was still in the aft position of our dispersed formation. She suddenly pulled her wings in and dropped beneath the Eye its power just burning her tail. We has spread out so that the Titan should not be able to get all of us, and even if she could the other Flights would make it out.
Felicity followed and twisted but the Eye lifted and speared right through her.
Her scream was shortly lived as her flesh and armor cooked and the psychic backlash from her dying Zephyr hit us.
The imagery and sensations burned into my mind as I rolled over and pushed my Zephyr until the air spirits screamed. Flicking up a wing I rolled over and shifted.
The coldness of my suit suddenly turned to fire as my left wing caught the force of the Eye's Wrath. That entire side was baked and my arm blistered within the armor and the remaining two-thirds drained evocation flasks automatically discharged.
I screamed and the displays went off as my enchantments flicked and I started to fall.
Looking over I saw the Eyes' beam rise up attempting to go after GreenBlade. And then the flasks detonated.
They gave a couple flat thumps that knocked the air out of my chest. I tried to exhale and concentrated. My right arm went to my throat and flicked the armor under my pectoral to hit the manual restart.
The good news was that I could feel my Zephyrs had survived the hit.
There was a hum and the enchantments started to power back up. I concentrated on the spell and the growing line of runes at the bottom of my field of view.
Only then did I look back down to confirm how much altitude I still had.
The dark city rushed up.
Wincing I slowly spread my right wing and started to catch some air. Angling my tail to the left side kept me from entering a spin, but it would be enough to slow down.
Not with half of the joints to my left wing simply gone and the remaining membranes cut to ribbons. Fortunately, I was a Ritual Plate Pilot.
The first thing a pilot had to be able to do was bond with and direct air spirits.
And my Zephyr, while shaken, were alive.
After confirming that my collection of spirits could slow my airspeed I started to look for a landing spot.
Several buildings below me still stood. There was a variety of sizes. Alas I was a bit too far south of the lines and I could not see any friendly forces within range.
Upside, a hard restart was all my Gorgon rig needed to be restored.
Striking a balance between defensibility and observability and egress I quickly evaluated the available landing areas.
And I aimed for the largest flattest roof I could see.
Time was short, and my Zephyr were already bleeding off speed and helping my remaining wing nudge me along. They pushed to slow me down, but increasing thrust was another factor.
The mercantile building was between twenty and thirty stories and had a broad roof with several heating and cooling structures atop. To one side was a round VTOL pad marked with an H.
I ended up landing near the edge and my knees bent taking in the weight as I leaned forward.
Air blew around me and I exhaled. It took a moment to get used to the feeling of ground beneath my armored boots.
I focused on the emergency landing procedure. After checking my perimeter and seeing that I was secure or at least isolated I then took stock.
My wounds were not crippling; I could mostly use my left hand, but I was flight ineffective. Having only one wing did that And there was a fair bit of pain along my torso where I had an explosion go off near me.
Once I was as reasonably sure I was not bleeding anywhere under my armor, or at least not heavily bleeding, I took an injection from the suit's medical pack. The numbing from the targeted analgesics was distracting but far less than the flensed wing, sheared bones, and bruised ribs.
Physically I could be better, even after I regrew my wing, my suit would need to be fixed.
And of my suit, I had no evocation flasks for my Lances, but I had my suite of conventional close-in and stand-off weapons. The Gorgon rig was already functional and my Zephyr were present if upset.
I sipped some water from the drinking tube and snapped open my helmet. Cold, smoky air brushed my face and nostrils as I opened a thigh compartment and started munching on a ration bar.
The helmet had a nutrition tube too, but compared to that "broth" even the most worn old chocolate wafer bar or bland jerky was far more palatable. I chewed thoughtfully, crushing a sugared energy gem between my teeth, thankful my maintenance crew stocked the good stuff as I checked the rest of my suit's systems
The Ritual Plate looked worse than it really was. The outer armor was scorched and there were dents and gouges in the matt grey material and dark blue steel brushed filigree, but the enchantments were solid enough. The biggest problem was that it, and myself, were down a wing.
I was not mono-focused. Getting lost in a status display on the battlefield was an easy way to get killed. Fortunately, I was a skilled multi-tasker, even by Pilot standards. And that's when the trouble started. It was one thing to look out over the ashen, deadened cityscape.
It was another to let the sensation of millions of terrified minds. My hands clenched, armored gauntlets starting to power up as I flexed my knees, the suit responded to my greater tension and I exhaled. This city was insane. It was huge, without power, without magic. Plunged into a nightmare of an unexpected invasion.
I focused on the Gorgon's systems. I could control that feed. There was less... emotion. Less leakage from all the poor people dumped into a battle to the knife, a world of tooth and claw.
I swallowed my snack, took some more water, and looked at the next part of the check list.
All that was left was to check my communication array. I flipped the channel and sending a ping to my Flight Coordination I wondered if the rest of my Flight had made it...
My shoulders shook as I remembered Felicity's screams and relived the echoes of feeling her die. I exhaled. It was not the first time we had lost people. I concentrated. "This is Volantes Centurion Valentina Orbez, 6th Squadron, 4th Wing."
++++
This voice from Flight Ops sounded a lot older to my ear. "This is Valhalla Flight Control, we read you. Condition?"
"Grounded, medically stable, position reasonably secure," I stated as I scanned around the roofline. It couldn't have been more than half a minute since I was hit. The battle was still going on. RP Squadrons were crossing the sky.
"I'm reading that your Gorgon is functional; can you resume telemetry?" There was a pause and before I could answer she came with another question. " Valentina can you confirm your location?"
"Yes Valhalla Flight, sending telemetry now." I then read off some map coordinates based on the building I had landed on.
There was another pause. "Can you get eyes on the Titan?"
Well. So much for getting a Spatha dispatched to pick me up. Yes the local airspace might not be the most safe environment, but if the Titan could be avoided...
But no, I had a mission. "Affirmative," I replied
I crouched a bit further down and made my way further north on the roof. Key was to get a comprehensive view but not silhouette myself. I was high up, but anyone with the right eyes could see someone if they stood on the edge of a roofline.
The Titan was impossible to miss. I was closer than the majority of our strike mission, and I was relatively stationary. Getting a lock on a titanic figure in the midst of combat was trivial.
She had advanced maybe halfway down the block and was now midway between intersections. At the moment no one stood before her, which meant the rain of artillery and Ritual Plate had intensified. It was enough to have her put the Eye's gaze skyward, but she was still advancing, and our forces were pulling back mostly behind lines of concrete debris, burned-out vehicles, and shattered brickwork that had been piled up.
The Fomor behind her had tried to keep up with her but their effort was desultory. The retreating First Cohort had created a concavity in our lines. And beyond the Titan's spearhead they had been unable to advance on the flanks.
I automatically split my focus and had the Gorgon Rig gaze further afield. The Svartalfheim embassy was eastward closer to the lake. I could see the flash of artillery in maniple strength as 4 Arachne batteries rotated through targets. Something that had to have been a ground launch torpedo shot into the air, and was followed by a storm of smaller Vel Missiles.
Interesting. Were the Fomor marshaling their remaining air-assets? Beyond the Embassy, to the North and even closer to the lake was where we estimated the Fomor had their main reserves and logistics support.
It was certainly where they had made landfall, and had dedicated a lot of troops to securing a cordon and lines of communication back to the beach. They had expended a lot of manpower to try to brave the beaches and move equipment and supplies across that zone.
More of my focus returned to Ethniu
I could not be the only one with a visual on the Titan. I suspected that there was likely at least one Veiled Forward Recon team in a dedicated spotter role. And there had to be at least one Occultia Pilot up there. The Valhalla had an entire Stealth Surveillance Squadron. And one Flight of that were Occultia.
But, if we were all at different orientations, and different altitudes... then the War College boffins and Librarians could triangulate and cross-check our data.
The First Cohort was pulling back under cover of the Arcana Engineers setting up a ward and swelling up the breastworks raising the height of the stone cover. The Eye had a cooldown period, but that only bought time.
The Engineer's portable Wards were intricate, expensive bits of kit designed to provide protection from air assaults and artillery. They only delayed the Eye slightly before their warding shields failed, but it was more time.
Though, in all technicality, even the thickest earthen barrier the geomancers raised up was merely concealment and not cover. So, far nothing had been able to stop the Eye's power, only slow it down.
By then the Fomor were starting to catch up and the Titan resumed her advance.
She bounded atop the concrete rubble barricade as two Centuries pulled back while their Marius Mules on remote control with Minerva rotary guns opened up. It did little to slow her but it was enough to allow several squads of Alpinum in their ceramic armor to advance.
Assigned to the 12th by BlackSky herself, they were the Legate's personal guard and advanced troops. That the 12th's commander was not there, and instead the attack was being commented by a willowy-ripcord-thin, flat-eyed Tribune wielding an equally slender sword did not speak well for the Legate's current condition.
Seeing the troops, the Titan smiled, her ethereally beautiful features twisted in cruel pleasure. "Finally! Enough running! You half breeds are abandoned. This is not your-"
And then a Vestal scout tank's main guns hit her in the chest and neck.
She let out a howl of anger, more upset at being interrupted than for any impact of the enhanced armor-piercing rounds on titanic bronze. She then jumped down and raced through the withering fire of the Alpinum Guard from across the street. "Then die, you rude Swine!" the Titan screamed with such volume that I did not need my Gorgon rig to hear her.
"Keep focus," Flight Ops said in my ear.
And then in a teleport flash followed a blinding arc like the first rays of the rising sun shot across the titan and her supporters. As smaller flashes flared around her, a tall pale figure with glossy black hair, curling horns, gold wings, and a black armored gown slammed into the Titan at just the right angle to knock her back onto the barricade.
The imperious figure was slimmer than her mother, but retained much of her regal bearing as she took the Tribune's long sword. The steel lit up, the entire blade glowing with a bright golden light as the air around it shimmered with heat.
Behind the figure, the minor flashes had revealed the matt-black light-armored figures of the Broadcast Recon troops. who had teleported in with the Daughter.
Ethniu looked down at the demoness with mocking grin. "Finally. I thought your breed were nothing but cowards. Who stands before me?"
The black-haired demon gave a thin smile. "Praetor Peregrinus DawnStrike. Before your father imprisoned you, I was conquering worlds at Mother's side. This petty host, this tantrum, goes no further. You will not advance."
++++
Sizing up DawnStrike, the Titan laughed. "Bold words." And then the light of the Eye shot out.
Instead of consuming the Praetor, there was a golden flash as she swept her sword, stepping inside of the beam's arc. Sunlight lit up the battlefield like a barrage of star-shells and the Eye's wrathful crimson power gouged through the golden ward raised in the sword's wake.
But by then DawnStrike was past the attack.
The Titan turned her head and the Praetor continued to turn, to the larger woman's side and slashed up with the tip of the luminous incendiary blade.
Moving with an even quicker blinking speed, Ethniu still screamed as the empowered sword kissed the side of her hip, leaving a flaming line of bubbling blood.
"You!" she screamed.
"Ah, well I was told someone with sufficient divine, or infernal, power could wound you." DawnStrike gave a little salute with the sword. "Let us see which I am."
Behind the Praetor the First Cohort continued to... evacuate. Broadcast Recon troops that had arrived with DawnStrike were helping teleport others further out and rebuild lines. The barrages on the Fomor Cohorts intensified making sure no one could get to their Mistress. It was all a continuation of previous retreats, but with more resources and organization.
And with a Daughter taking up the full attention of the Titan.
Ethniu had screamed and pounced at DawnStrike, the sword almost opened up her arm but she turned nearly gabbed into the demoness the Eye burst into ravening light and -
DawnStrike vanished in a golden flash.
She reappeared behind the Titan and yanked her hair back and down and tried to spear through her neck with the sword tip.
The blade creased the Titan's neck as she twisted, her sliver hair trying to tear out of the Praetor's hands. Turning, the Titan crouched at the knees and grabbed one of DawnStrike's arms and twisted. The was a snapping sound as she tried to backhand her away.
Yelling, DawnStrike smashed the sword against the taller woman's face, on the side without the Eye of Balor. There was another sunburst and the newly half-blind Titan tried to grapple the shorter woman but there was another flash as she teleported away.
"Coward! You are all callow and craven!" Ethniu screamed, seemingly trying to sight with the Eye itself.
While snapping her arm back into place, DawnStrike appeared to her blind side and tried to stab through the Titan's torso. Her green, mundane, eye regained focus and Ethniu flickered back as the sword just missed her.
"You are too slow," the Titan crowed as she stomped forward. The Eye flashed again and DawnStrike dodged and brought up the blade's light.
This time the golden ward shattered and the sword was immolated, for a bare moment turning into a lightly enchanted Legate's blade before it boiled away.
As the Titan tried to grapple with her, DawnStrike's tail went up slicking long fingers for the taller woman's trouble. Claws extended and both hit as DawnStrike tried to go under the floating ribs on the back of side far from the Eye, and the Titan simply flicked her wrist, the blade of her hand slamming into the Praetor's torso,
A bit of blood sprayed out DawnStrike's lips as she teleported further back.
"You lack commitment. If you had stayed you could have cut me deeper." Ethniu smirked and rubbed the small scratches on her side.
"And where in your sad life of imprisonment did you learn that?" DawnStrike laughed.
Ethniu charged her and the Eye of Balor burned. DawnStrike managed to evade but I gasped as her right wing just barely avoided the blast. The Fomor cohort a block behind DawnStrike did not far so well.
"Do not lose contact with the Titan," Flight Ops ordered, her tone clipped and urgent over the transmission.
"Mother knows the depth of my commitment," the Praetor said as the Titan tried to close and land another blow with immense fists.
"Where is your precious Mother? She abandons you like this!" Ethniu kicked out and managed to connect and there was a crunch in DawnStrike's midsection. More blood came out as DawnStrike caught Ethniu's right wrist, twisted and, using her entire body, turned it over and bent her hand back. With a burst of strength that flashed golden light down the street, she snapped it.
Ethniu screamed and held the broken wrist.
"Pain is new to you. Is it not?" Gasping, DawnStrike smiled.
"You will suffer. I will wear you down and when you can't run, when you realize your precious Mother sent you out here to die, then you will have oblivion." The baleful gaze from Ethniu's green eye was almost as hateful and intense as from the Eye of Balor
Looking behind the Titan, confirming that the Legions had withdrawn, the Praetor laughed. "I pity you, you have no one behind you. No one to trust. So much pride that you have to do everything yourself."
Ethniu charged and the Eye flashed.
DawnStrike teleported away, and then a 3 tone chime came over my communications channel.
The one that meant incoming Torpedo strike.
+++
The Fujiwara Aerial Torpedo was one of the main forms of power projection in the Household Fleet. Squadrons of Mace Torpedo Destroyers guarded the troop and armor transports and fleet cargo ships. And every RP carrier larger than a Mellona Medium had at least a few Torpedoes.
But the bulk of those 2.7 ton, 26 foot, missiles were dedicated to fleet defense with some for ground support. Which in light of the Fomor's negligible airborne and anti-air assets meant those munitions were basically dead-weight.
And while most of the Valhalla's torpedoes were for Fleet Defense; as an Avalon class heavy carrier, she had 48 torpedoes. Which gave plenty of space for ground support and other strike assets. The Battlecruiser HFV DarkStar was also lurking about. It had participated in the initial shore bombardment and rumor was that the DarkStar was using its stock of Madhu's Trident aquatic torpedoes and compliment of Torpedo Boats/Bombers in an anti-submarine warfare role.
Not to mention Landing Fleet had a Bombardment Flotilla with 2 Maul torpedo Cruisers in the fleet, each with 40 torpedoes and a Pike Torpedo Boat Tender that carried half a squadron of the quick, lethal craft.
Part of the barrage was too fast to follow. Even the Gorgon rig had a hard time getting a visual lock on something with a terminal speed over thrice the speed of sound. I managed to get enough data to tentatively identify one set of torpedoes. The other set was traveling far slower and was easier to identify.
Four supersonic shipkillers detonated just above the Titan. The Ascalon was a standard dual-purpose 700 lb warhead designed to pierce capital ship wards and puncture armor. The alchemically treated explosives were lensed foreword into incendiary jets as the backwash from the torpedo's detonations leveled the city block around their impact site.
The Titan was consumed as massive explosions shot through her and turned the area she stood upon into a crumbling crater.
The other torpedoes were slower and instead of hitting one target spread out along the entire line of battle. The Gae Bulg was a nasty bit of ordnance. A subsonic Torpedo, it exchanged reduced range for increased payload capacity. Instead of a single warhead, it carried over 150, 2 lb barbed sub-munitions. Though that was only half of the anti-infantry damage. The bomblettes were released just Surtalogi fuel air torpedoes also detonated. in incendiary clouds.
Nearly two dozen of these ground support weapons fell along the Fomorian lines. Much of a cruiser's loadout. There were also Log Mor anti-vehicle torpedoes. Like the Gae Bulk, the Log Mor had a heavier payload, but instead of a mass of smaller bomblettes, it only released 2 dozen larger Plumbata penetrators. These were designed to pierce armored vehicles and had independent targeting.
The Fomor did not have any such assets. I supposed the Notus spirits guiding those munitions went for whatever large or high value targets they could hit with extreme overkill. And because the Fleet Ordnance Department were pyromaniacs, the Log Mor also had an incendiary over blast.
Dealing with mortars, artillery and Ritual Plate had given the Fomor some experience in the importance of dispersion and dealing with air attacks. But even an Arachne battery pummeling your lines is a pale comparison to a heavy Torpedo strike.
It was like watching a few grid squares on a tactical map being swept clean.
The street was utterly obliterated as the Fomorian host had its heart ripped out and most of its lines cut down. Their reserves, as those further away from our lines, got some of the worst of it and were hit by overlapping firestorms until a crater similar to the one that had buried the Titan had formed.
And then the 12th Legion's entire Arachne maniple resumed firing at the Fomor that had managed to survive the Torpedo bombardment and had decided to move in some way.
"COWARDS!" the Titan screamed as she clawed her way out of the crater. It looked like her wrist had healed. Once at the crater's lip, her eye swept in a low arc as she circled her gaze. The First Cohort had used DawnStike's fight to pull to a safe distance. They might not have been out of range of the Eye but they were out of Torpedo range.
The Fomor Host shattered. Some with maddened fury or bleak resignation tried to charge the 12th, but more simply fled. Both were hit by the might of a Legion with full support. Ritual Plate Squadrons took out Lance attacks on larger concentrations and Sarpedona used conventional evocations to burn the Fomor. The RP squadrons left the largest groups for the occasional Torpedo to neutralize.
The smart ones stayed put, or moved to the nearest cover and hunkered down.
I shivered and focused the telemetry on the Titan. But I wondered where DawnStrike had gone to. For that matter where was BlackSky?
The three tone notice chimed again.
"Face ME! You COWARDS!" The Titan's frustrated anger threatened to break the heavens. And then the Eye tried to track the sky, there was an explosion above her followed by an overlapping crescendo as more ordnance fell upon her.
Even if she could take out a Torpedo, it would be very unlikely she'd be able to hit a Mothership. Not only were our larger fleet assets kept at standoff range for that reason, but Torpedoes could be launched from Hasta Torpedo Bombers or the Kolibri Torpedo Corvette. Not to mention that the large aerial munitions could take an indirect path to their target with dog-legs and other evasions.
Each detonation was smaller but the Torpedoes were harder to track, these were the
Gungnir which was a stealthy shipkiller that came in under a powerful veil. That stealth capacity came at a great expense in components and took up mass, reducing the warhead size Maybe the Eye could see those coming in, maybe not.
They still hit the Titan.
Alongside those was a series of teleport flashes a bare handful of stories above her that immediacy tuned into explosions. The Hrunting was an even more expensive "shipkiller" that had a high-accuracy, short-range, one-shot teleportation enchantment. The fiscal expensive of this strike was breathtaking. The teleport runes inscribed into the torpedo's body allowed the weapon to simply avoid most of the target's defenses, and simply appear as close as possible, at full velocity.
For the Titan's face this was, in missile terms, right next to her face.
++++
The entire block was now a blasted moonscape resembling the more desolate parts of Lantia.
The Fomor had just lost roughly a Legion's worth in casualties, about seven thousand various troops. Maybe half were dead, but the survivors had lost all cohesion and organization as fighting formations. Most of them were wounded and showed. And if they did not move quickly they would not get the chance to get organized, or into cover.
I idly wondered how many Torpedoes the Fleet had left. This many war shots had to have at least dented our ground support capability. Even a Bombardment Flotilla would be rapidly breaking out reloads from their supporting cargo ships.
Though I supposed with a dearth of enemy air assets or capital vessels we had plenty of shipkillers to lob at the Titan.
It was massively expensive, but so were squadrons of Ritual Plate or Cohorts of Legionaries.
Ethniu stood at the bottom of an uneven crater marred by collapsed tunnels and conduits. Dirty water had begun to flood into it in sprays and gurgles
The Titan was incandescent with rage as she stomped and splashed out of the crater once again.
As she neared the lip she hesitated and for a moment I wondered if the Titan would take cover. Instead she stood up and, proud as could be, she regained purchase on what could generously be called "street level".
Which nicely silhouetted her.
A full block away, DawnStrike appeared to her side and a golden beam of light shot down the broken avenue. The rubble lit up in sharp morning light, casting harsh shadows as the beam shot to the Titan.
Ethniu dodged but there might have been a weariness to her motion. And the beam adjusted, hitting the Titan in the chest and pushing her back.
She stumbled and one step went back past the lip of the crater and she started to stagger down the broken slope.
"You DARE mock ME!" Ethniu screamed and the Eye blasted out its hateful ray.
The Praetor vanished and reappeared to the other side of the crater and tilted her head. "Not from any great effort."
Ethniu gave an inarticulate rage-filled below and leapt across the crater trying to grapple with her.
Quirking an eyebrow, DawnStrike and gestured with her hand as if she were ordering in a wine bar and the clouds above thickened and a massive pillar of orange fire shot down slamming the Titan back into the crater.
The Eye shot up and raked over the lip of the crater in a circle. Buildings blew apart in a rough arc.
There were blasts of fire to the South that reflected off the clouds making them seem aflame. I could make out the hazy motions of Nyx stealth scouts and saw long lances of fire clearing an entire road of stalled vehicles. From my vantage point, I could barely make them out a couple dozen blocks or so, but CloudFire was among them. Another Daughter of the Imperatrix had arrived. Her eyes burned and her flaming hair billowed behind her with the magical bleed-off of the fiery pillar she had summoned at her sister's order.
The wards on the Lavin tanks shone as they raced down the road spreading their formation. It was not a stealthy approach, but given the smoldering fire to each warding shield I supposed CloudFire was trading stealth for protective power.
"You will NOT deny MY due!" The Titan screamed. "You interloping half breeds are nothing! You stand between me and a reckoning with the pitiful dregs of this world's divinity"
DawnStrike's green eyes turned flat. "You simpering Child. This is War. You bring your army to kill, to seize ground, to destroy your enemies. Here you ravage and pillage and offer no quarter. And you dare whine when we draw blood? When we refuse to treat this as some game?"
Racing up from behind our lines, the 23rd Legion Behemoth and its Battle Tanks were moving in to support the 12th Legion. I was not sure what even two dozen Lavin heavies would do against the Titan, but 24 tanks with their wards enhanced by Censor CloudFire? Plus their scouting vehicles, artillery, Ritual Plate, and Infantry support. That would at least slow the Titan down. Slow her enough for BlackSky and our allies to strike?
The Titan stomped back up the slope. The Eye glowed but did not fire. "You-"
DawnStrike cut the Titan off. "If you say cheater, I will be quite cross."
"Yes, you would hate to lose a bet, Dear Sister," a deeper resonant purring voice said as CloudFire appeared far down another street.
Her flaming orange and yellow hair was pulled back to where it flowed down the back of her armored gold and bronze dress. She stood with her immense hooves braced on the top deck of a battle tank that shimmered with intense wards and had a lowered ramming dozer blade. Three more tanks rumbled behind her in covering positions.
The Titan looked between the two Daughters.
"No you petulant child, you will not advance," DawnStrike patiently explained.
++++
Smirking, Titan stood to her full height. "You think these toys can stop me? The most you can do is bury me in rubble."
As her tanks raced around, CloudFire' laugh echoed over the broken landscape. "We can delay you; we can buy time. "
She gestured and the tank troop she was leading, plus three other quartets, a full Tank Swarm, that had gotten into position opened fire. The Lavin's 124mm shell was about 50 lbs. And 16 exotic armor-piercing enchanted variants hit the Titan in a storm of antic light and lashing flames that turned the ground into ash.
Half of the crater slumped apart into a fine heap of gritty sand that blew apart in a gritty cloud.
The battle tanks immediately revved their engines and withdrew leaving a gasping Titan scrambling as sparks and flames flickered over her metallic skin. Half of her silver hair had been melted off.
"We're not the ones afraid of morning, afraid of what will happen when Mortal Authorities arrive." DawnStrike's hands started to glow.
"But where is your mother? You fight here while she cowers..." The Titan paused and turned her head to the North-east.
My gaze went in that direction as the Gorgon rig locked onto a large teleport flash followed by... hundreds, no thousands of flashes. All along the Fomor's lines of communication back to the lake where the Fomor had their reserves and supplies. At least three thousand individual teleports.
A mass teleport. In theory sufficient skill could enable one to arrive and, using their own observations and the sensor feed from a whole cadre of ground and aerial scouts, teleport entire Cohorts of troops, vehicles, and support equipment. And to place each fire-team, rotary cannon, and tank in the exact spot for maximum devastation. And to do so while artillery and torpedoes launched supporting attacks.
It would take skill, coordination, and raw power on an unbelievable scale.
BlackSky had arrived.
And she had personally brought six cohorts with full support in a mass ambush the Fomor didn't see coming, an ambush they couldn't conceive of. One that could encircle the enemy, or at least cut off their line of retreat.
Contrary to her claims, the Titan's host was not an occupying force. For the Fomor this was a raid. And the most important part of a raiding mission was being able to break contact, exfiltrate, or at least retreat.
DawnStrike's smile was cold. "You wanted Mother's attention."
Ethniu screamed.
The Eye flashed towards Dawn. She teleported away; the clouds above coalesced as CloudFire summoned another fiery pillar that struck down. The Titan was briefly illuminated inside the roiling inferno. And then there was another three-tone alert.
My Gorgon rig was able to track these subsonic torpedoes. And from their giant monolithic explosions they were likely Galatine torpedoes. An inexpensive option, the Galatine eschewed most stealth, evasion, and advanced propulsion systems. Instead, it was a mere delivery system for over 800 lbs of high alchemical explosives.
Though expense was relative, for all the Torpedoes, Ritual Plate, Cohorts, and Armored Troops we might as well have been dropping pallets of millions of aurei on the Titan.
Some of the Lavin Battle Tanks, and their attendant infantry riding in Nymph light transports and Triarii IFVs had moved to support the Cohorts of the 12th Legion. The 23rd's LRI Cohorts were also arriving; Umbra Mediums deploying Infantry Centuries right to the battlefield.
Most of the 23rd's tanks were apparently the Lavin Mark 2 which had 2 Minerva rotary cannons in addition to a Metis heavy rotary cannon coaxial with the main gun which could also fire anti-infantry canister shot. With plenty of Infantry and RP support the shattered Fomor Formations were facing withering anti-infantry fire.
Even in the nightmare that was urban combat, without the Titan, the Fomor would have to count on an especially strong, brave, and creative sorcerer to even have a hope of slowing a Lavin.
The tanks advanced. And it seemed that the Fomorian inventory was light on anti-armor weaponry.
The third Torpedo barrage cleared. I wondered if the rotating through the types was testing to see which had the most effect on the Titan or was some commander dealing with the Fleet's finite supply of the heavy munitions.
DawnStrike had appeared further back closer but not quite near to her sister. Neither wanted to have both be able to be hit by the same blast from the Eye.
She simply spread her wings behind her and gestured "come forward" with her open hand.
The Titan's metal skin was no longer pristine; it had a rainbow patina that many metallic sheets got after an improper temper. The Titan took a step then a note of hesitation, of caution, crossed her face.
"Dither if you wish," the Praetor said. "It is not our forces who have daybreak as their enemy. Let Mother extinguish your minions, your allies, your supplies. I'm sure they'll accept such a betrayal with magnanimity."
"What do You know, Coward!" the Titan screamed. "You are interlopers here! This is not your world. They do not respect you."
Ethniu froze at DawnStrike's small smile.
Maybe. Maybe the other Accorded Nations did not respect us. But they knew how to use an opening. The Fae were another force of respectable skill in misdirection. If the Queen of Winter could not make use of an angered enemy myopically focused on another target that insisted on a harassing retreat, drawing the Titan further and further from the center of combat...
But it was not just faerie. It was said that the White Council's Wizards needed time for some great arcane working. And the Embassy was showing, only a fool would challenge the Svartalves on ground they had prepared.
And then there was Dame BlackStone. She had appeared time and time again; this was her city.
++++
Calculating the battle before her versus the one behind her, the Titan set her jaw. "Fomor! To me!" she screamed as the Eye's ravaging beam sliced across the battlefield.
There was a maddened howl as the remaining Fomorian forces launched themselves towards the Titan. Hordes of long-limbed muscular shaggy creatures, short be-tentacled ape-like things, amphibious Fomorians, and human levies all broke away from our lines and moved towards the Titan.
Their casualties were heavy. Seeing a force concentration, the Arachne barrage had intensified, which made me hope that Legion Behemoth also brought more artillery shells.
DawnStrike seemed perturbed while CloudFire simply cackled.
The pillars of fire slammed down from the sky as the Armored vehicles of 23rd Legion Behemoth advanced supporting the reinvigorated troops of 12th Legion Severitas. Keeping a clear dead zone they avoided pressing to the Titan.
The three-tone chime alerted and the Fomorian reinforcements were blasted by shipkiller torpedoes intended for the Titan. The monolithic high alchemy explosives blew through the enemy troops.
They may have been less efficient than with a dedicated ground-support weapon, but the results were devastating.
But then Ethniu was already gone.
"Valhalla Flight, this is Centurion Valentina the Titan is retreating," I gasped and paused to take a sip from my water tube. "Repeat. The Titan is Retreating."
There was a pause. "Understood," the young technician said her voice a pleased purr. "Do you have a bearing?"
"North-east direction. Contact track is highlighted. High ground speed," I transmitted as I had the Gorgon Rig follow the tall form as she ran down the blasted street. Some of her retainers tried to keep up, but they were quickly left in the dust.
"Understood," the crisp voice replied. "Keep visual as long as you can."
"Confirm." I zoomed out the scrying intake from the Gorgon rig. "She is rendezvousing with support elements. Estimate may reach BlackSky's area of operation in zero-four minutes. Longer if she abandons all support."
Though I wondered how long BlackSky and her cohorts would be there. The bit of attention I could spare to that part of the battlefield indicated things were winding down. Unless she was planning to ambush the Titan herself, BlackSky could withdraw in good order.
As Ethniu made it to what seemed to be a stacked concrete parking lot the Fomor had used as a staging point between their main supply dump and their line of attack on the 12th, The three-tone trill sounded.
And the entire building was blown to rubble. I gave a sharp grin as I transmitted that set of footage. If we had to burn the city to save it from the Fomor then so be it.
It was doubtful that that would kill or even wound her. But that was not the point.
The Titan had put much in her inevitability, her invincibility. That none could stand athwart her.
With that arrogance she had boasted to the Accorded Nations, announced her plans to invade, and hurled herself at the Legions.
And it was Ethniu who had fled, bloody and battered.
I drank some more water. And split my attention between tracking when the Titan dug her way out and the 12th and 23rd Legions' assault on the remaining Fomor.
Maybe now Valhalla Command could spare a Spatha VTOL to pick me up.
End "Snippet" 3.
Special thanks to especially preier for checking and reading over this. For ch13 I have over 4,500 words written and hte combat scene is going well.
