The plan had been simple. Rather than attempting to blunder headlong into the Desolation, into what was effectively Tersine’s territory, we would make them come to us. Our hope was that the water tank we’d stolen was important enough to draw the Cassandrans out. With the oasis heavily fortified and all the Blueroser soldiers concentrated into a single location, we could engage the Cassandrans on favorable terms and eke out a victory.
For once, there was no catch. Tersine had no secret trap, no ace in the hole; as far as we could tell, she hadn’t even expected this, or if she had expected it she hadn’t had a counter prepared. When the counterattack came—and it did come, another score for Lady Halflance and the allied soldiers—the fortifications held out marvelously, providing the Blueroser soldiers with ample positions from which to fire back upon the attacking Cassandrans from cover. Even the airship and its tremendous cannons had been accounted for and countered: the deep trench lines that zig-zagged around the edges of the oasis provided excellent cover against artillery fire. The airship dared not approach close enough to properly leverage the height advantage, not with how many guns were pointed at it, and after several minutes of bombardment the airship must have run out of ammunition. One victory achieved.
All of Tersine’s trickery had come to nothing, her technological edge no longer able to overcome our weight of guns. I theorized that the wound I’d dealt to her less than two weeks earlier might have been responsible: such a deep and piercing injury would have left her down for the count for quite a long time, unable to plot counter-schemes to our own action.
With trickery and ambush no longer a possibility, then, the Cassandrans were forced to rely on brute firepower and attrition. And they had more of both elements to fall back on than anyone could have accounted for. The forces around the oasis numbered some eight hundred soldiers, a full battalion of Blueroser infantry armed with bolt-action rifles and the occasional heavy weapon, a mortar or the like. The assault came as two forces closing in around the oasis, one from the north and one from the south: and each of those two armies was about equal in size to the defenders.
From the north came the Cassandrans all a-clad in green. Thankfully, this was not one of the elite regiments armed entirely with the clockwork rifles: maybe one in four carried that terrible weapon. But one in four was enough. They arrived in a surge, not aggressively charging but instead carefully taking the measure of their opposite numbers. Bullets flew thick in the air like swarming dune-flies, tearing the rock and rubble of that section of the oasis into shrapnel and shards. The defenders on the northern end were outnumbered two to one, and I am told that it was only by virtue of heroic bravery that they held out at all. I had to be told this because I wasn’t fighting on the north end. The south end of the oasis was also under assault by a rather more disorganized foe.
The third portion of the garrison that had originally held the oasis when we had arrived. My own sudden breakdown had been severe enough to prevent me from recognizing what I was seeing: my eyes processed the bodies as just vague humanoid forms. Once I saw what was in front of me, though, it all made sense. Of course Tersine would make use of the local stonewose to bolster her own numbers: it was the same thing as she had always done, as all the Cassandran agents had done. Eight hundred, nine hundred, maybe even a thousand stonewose pressed into service and hurled forward against our lines.
And they were forced; these were not even the desperate mercenaries I had seen in Urcos or in New Alderburg. You could tell they were forced because they kept trying to run away, and getting shot when they did: I saw it too many times for it to be merely a coincidence or a few deserters. The ones holding the guns made it worse, because it wasn’t higher-ranked stonewose or even Cassandran soldiers, but a force of Mechanodrones.
I’d almost forgotten about Mechanodrones, and until seeing them on the field of battle in the oasis, I’d completely forgotten that the creation of the Mechanodrone force in Amrinval had been sponsored by Tersine herself. Seeing the lurching figures, humanoid shapes clad in loose rubber suits like engineer’s overalls, their faces occluded by gas masks, brought back memories of horror. I felt, for a moment, as weak and helpless as I had felt the first time I was faced by those shambling monstrosities of flesh bound to machine. Then that moment of weakness passed and was replaced by rage. Tersine needed to be destroyed for this.
It was that rage that propelled me headlong into the fight. The battle along the southern side of the oasis wasn’t the careful, industrial game of two equal-and-opposite modern armies, the sort of thing where one alraune wouldn’t make a difference. Things were savage there. The stonewose came in an endless seething wave, driven on by terror of the mutilated creatures following behind them. Most of them didn’t even have guns, all the better to keep them in line. Instead they fought with spears and axes and swords and the sheer impossible durability of their anatomy, simply regenerating through the hail of bullets.
The first couple of those charges that landed home, I was there, meeting them head-on. With my blade coated in my own blood, it could hack through stonewose regeneration, maiming and bleeding and breaking anyone it came across. I was faster than them, tougher, I knew their weakness.
My goal wasn’t to just slaughter stonewose, though. I had too much sympathy for that any longer. I needed to figure out where these ones had come from and free them from servitude to Tersine, maybe even get them on our side. My first few attempts… failed miserably. Of course it did; these weren’t the New Alderburg stonewose who spoke a language that I understood. A few of them looked like they might have recognized me, but that could have just as easily been shock at seeing a tiny girl with a sword covered in still-liquid blood cutting through stonewose by the score.
So I went to plan B. The Blueroser soldiers around me were stuck in their trenches, unwilling to counterattack lest they be caught in the open. But I bore no such restriction. If the Mechanodrones were the only thing preventing the stonewose from breaking ranks and running… why not take out the Mechanodrones? The design hadn’t been improved upon since I’d first run into them, all the way back in Amrinval: they still had the same weakness in the form of the E-ray receiver on the back of the neck. Destroy it, and the Mechanodrone would lose its connection to the control signal and collapse.
That Tersine hadn’t ever fixed such a glaring weakness suggested one of two possibilities. The first was that this was somehow the best of all possible iterations, that Mechanodrones would always have such a flaw. The second was that Tersine was copying directly from Nemesis’s crude early model, and she wasn’t iterating at all. If the latter possibility was true, then that meant she was panicking, in a hurry, and we had her on the back foot. Even as the stonewose and the Mechanodrones came on and on in endless waves, even as it became clear how severely the Bluerosers and I were outnumbered, the specter of that second possibility gave me hope.
Bit by bit, one squad at a time, I raced through the onslaught. Each new pack of stonewose I treated the same: I would rush for the nearest Mechanodrone, using cover to avoid its rifle fire until I was close enough for a final lunge. Once it was down, I would do my best to convey to the remaining stonewose that it was time to leave, which usually entailed kicking the Mechanodrone’s rifle across the ground, followed by a lot of shouting and waving of arms. Sometimes it didn’t work, and I was forced to flee or cut them down. More often than not, it did. If I’d had infinite time, if it had just been me alone amidst this infinite sea of attacking stonewose, I might have been able to deconstruct the enemy force. Even in poorer circumstances, I began to see distant fights between two groups armed with clockwork rifles, signs that the stonewose were beginning to break each other free.
And then, over the battlefield rang out a huge thundercrack sound. I was in a lull period of the fighting, which meant that I was able to look back and watch as a lone flare, nearly as bright as the hot Desolation sun, soared up over the oasis. It was a pre-arranged signal, one of a handful that could be communicated across the entire battlefield. One flare, being the easiest signal to send, was the signal to retreat.
For as good as I may be at combat—and I would say I’m rather above average in that department—I’m also very good at retreating. As soon as I saw that flare and was sure there wasn’t a second one incoming, I turned around and bolted for the center of the oasis, the large ruined structure that we had turned into a command post.
I passed firstly through the Blueroser lines, where the hundreds of soldiers were attempting to do the same and having a substantially worse time of it. They, after all, couldn’t rely on being able to heal through it if someone took the opportunity to shoot them in the back. I didn’t slow down out of pity; if anyone was going to be able to change the situation that had necessitated the flare, it was me. Once I was through the collapsing lines, there was a brief period of eerie quiet. Not true quiet, of course, not with the constant rattling of distant gunfire, but compared to the roar of being in the midst of it all? It was absolute silence.
And in that silence, flitting from shadow to shadow, was a squad of Cassandran soldiers. I ran into them suddenly, the green uniforms appearing as if by magic as I rounded a corner. Both sides were stunned by the sudden encounter, I think; unfortunately for them, I was stunned for less time, and in my panic and fear about what their presence meant, I leapt to violence. My sword and pistol were both in my hand before I knew it, the revolver emptying out in only a handful of seconds even as I charged into the fray.
Suffice it to say, a battle between half a dozen ordinary humans and one immortal woman who could move faster than the fastest human did not last very long. Most of the Cassandrans lay dead or bleeding out at my feet, and the remainder left their guns behind as they fled. As the violent reflex faded, though, something new took its place: absolute terror. If those Cassandrans had been there, so far past the frontlines, then…
As I continued racing to the rendezvous point, the signs of violence grew more and more frequent. Bodies, bullet casings, blood, all started to show up as flickers of terror in the corner of my eye as I ran. The only thing keeping me from complete panic was the knowledge that, if the battle had come all the way over here, if Halflance’s and Laura’s position had been overrun, then I definitely would have been able to hear it. As for what was actually happening, that was a question I didn’t have the time to even ask myself, let alone answer.
The command post bore all the signs of a recently-concluded battle. Corpses of Cassandran soldiers, at least twenty of them, lay scattered around it, too recent to have been moved aside, and the old stone was pockmarked with bullet-scars. At that particular moment, though, there was no sign of combat. No sign of anyone at all, in fact, at least not from the outside. For several pulse-pounding moments, I was afraid that I was somehow too late, that Lady Halflance and Laura had been captured or killed. But as I pushed through the door, I suddenly found myself with a rifle pointed in my face, and was struck by a relief so profound that I nearly fainted.
“Oh, it’s you.”
“Down!”
The former came from the Blueroser soldier who’d nearly blown my head off; the latter was from Lady Halflance. The soldier complied instantly. There was a few seconds of disorganized noise, all of Halflance’s staff reacting to my arrival in various shades of surprise, relief, and annoyance.
Once I was done processing my feelings, I went back to business. “What happened? Why the retreat signal?”
“Well, as you have no doubt seen, our ability to hold a cordon has collapsed. The north flank is rapidly collapsing, the holes getting larger each passing second. How go things on the south?”
“Better, I think,” I said. I explained, as quickly as possible, everything I’d learned about the structure of the stonewose force and how it could be disassembled. Halflance pondered.
“Could we get them on our side?”
I shrugged, then shook my head. “Not unless you happen to have a translator around. I mean, it’s possible we could end up fighting on the same side in a sort of enemy-of-my-enemy situation: some of the ones I set free definitely seemed interested in freeing their people. But I doubt they’ll do any more than the bare minimum necessary to get out of here.”
“Nonetheless, we can make use of that,” Halflance said.
Without realizing it, my eyes had drifted over to Laura. There wasn’t much she could do in these circumstances: she wasn’t a soldier, and while she could fight, she was absolutely too fragile to risk, unlike me. She muttered something under her breath, probably something to do with her mother’s ruthless pragmatism.
“What do we do now, then?” I asked.
“We reform around the center of the oasis. No more spreading out our forces.”
I sighed. “Okay, maybe I should have been more specific. What do I do now?”
Halflance’s lips pressed together. She had apparently not considered this beforehand, or if she had she was having second thoughts. “You’re a wild card. Good in almost any situation, but you can only be in one place at a time. I suggest you go on patrol, checking the line one segment at a time and fighting to prevent any trouble spots from getting worse.”
That was… something I could do, actually. Especially if “trouble spots” meant “places where our side was getting its ass kicked.” I glanced over at Laura again and decided to do a nice thing.
“Fine. But I want Laura with me.”
“No,” said Lady Halflance.
I sighed. “Please trust me that I’ll keep her safe.”
“What purpose would she even serve? She’s not as durable as you.”
“And she’s far from fragile,” I replied. “We’ve fought together before: I know that the two of us can get more done than just me alone. Plus, she knows way more about the layout of these Forebearer ruins, she can fill the gaps in my knowledge.”
I was bullshitting at high speed, but it seemed to be working. Lady Halflance’s gaze flitted uncomfortably back and forth between me and Laura, the tendons on the backs of her hands flexing as they gripped onto the nearby wall.
“Lady Halflance, please. Remember what we talked about?”
Lady Halflance reacted to that with a flurry of unnecessary movement, standing up and pacing to the other side of the room for seemingly no reason other than the need to be doing something. I let her burn off the energy, but kept my expression focused: she didn’t deserve to run away from this.
“Fine. If she gets hurt because of this you’ll die suffering.”
That was the end of the conversation. Laura, for her part, was quite happy to come along with me. She explained as we set out on our patrol that, indeed, her mother had been spending just about every moment she wasn’t commanding the troops ensuring that Laura was kept safe and protected, berating her if she so much as walked within line of sight of a window. Paranoia far beyond what even battlefield conditions justified.
We stopped talking after that. Best not to draw any attention, not when the enemy was anywhere and could attack at any time. Laura and I had only fought together like this a few times previously, so as we moved from building to building, from spot of cover to spot of cover, we steadily learned how best to coordinate. I would always go around corners first, the better to soak up any surprise gunfire; Laura would cover angles, her keener perception from her time on the streets giving her the advantage in spotting potential ambushes.
And there were ambushes. The enemy was closing in on us from every side, and they weren’t stupid enough to attack headlong. Every angle was a potential rifle, every corner one around which a Cassandran soldier might throw a crude stick grenade. I took more than a few injuries just from throwing myself in front of Laura to make sure she stayed intact. Not to say, of course, that she didn’t contribute either: when it came to battling a squad of soldiers, they naturally focused their attention on the girl who was both faster than sight and immune to bullets, leaving Laura plenty of opportunity to cut in with surprise attacks.
If it was just us against an entire invading army, of course, we wouldn’t have stood a chance. The Blueroser soldiers had seen the retreat order, and they knew its meaning just as well as we did; but the retreat, falling-back and formation of the new lines of battle was a chaotic, disordered affair. They came in bits and pieces, a squad here, a platoon there, many of them hauling wounded. More than once I found myself acting as a rearguard for a group of Blueroser soldiers while Laura guided them through the ruins one step at a time. It was a very good thing that I was very nearly incapable of becoming exhausted; but Laura wasn’t. How she was able to keep up with me for as long as she did, I have no idea.
The lesson from all of this was that we really didn’t stand a chance. If we had been able to hold out, somehow, keep the lines intact, it might have been possible to wear them down one piece at a time. But even though this retreat was, according to people who knew much better than me, the best option, it just wasn’t enough. The Bluerosers were getting torn apart just reforming into their new positions, let alone actually trying to fight back. The new defensive cordon was tiny, cramped, and worn down.
Those two ideas, my drive to keep fighting and my knowledge that we were doomed, never had to be reconciled in my mind. I was too busy to do that. Until, of course, I was given a golden opportunity by fate to slow down and escape.
That opportunity came as Laura and I dove for cover. The Cassandrans had brought forward a squad with machine rifles, able to lay down serious suppressing fire that neatly explained why the Blueroser lines on the north side had collapsed so quickly. Seeking to avoid getting completely annihilated with bullets, Laura and I rushed into the nearest structure, a one-story thing with weirdly thick walls. I spent the first few seconds inside of there in a panic, searching Laura from top to bottom for any injuries. Aside from a scattering of cuts she’d accumulated over the course of the day, there was nothing.
“Maybe your mother was right,” I moaned. “Maybe you should be taking cover somewhere and not bothering with… What are you looking at?”
Laura’s gaze had fallen over my shoulder and gone totally slack with awe. I spun around, following the look. At first I didn’t understand it in the slightest: it looked like an unremarkable building, just some walls and pillars and a staircase going down.
A staircase going down. We hadn’t seen anything like that in any of the other structures: for whatever reason, the Forebearers had much preferred above-ground construction to basements. That was weird. Laura and I both forgot about the battle ongoing outside, the gunshots, everything. I approached the staircase itself, peering down into the dark underneath. If only I’d had a lantern.
Laura, meanwhile, focused her attention above the stairs, at what I initially thought was a piece of unremarkable wall art.
“It’s a map,” Laura said. “I can’t read all of the language, but these are place names.”
That caught my attention. I stepped away from the staircase and paid close attention. Indeed it was a map, long angular lines connecting various circular points, each one labelled with a short snippet of Forebearer script. It hit me all at once where I’d seen this before.
“It’s a subway map,” I said. “A kind of underground transport railway, we have them all over the place on Earth.”
Laura nodded. “I heard they were building something like this in Grantval.” Slowly, she raised up a finger, pressing it gently to one particular mark in the plaster. “These would be the stops, yes?”
“Yeah. And the lines are all the different…well, lines.”
“This one right here says ‘Primary Control’.”