On the faces of many Alliance soldiers were bright grins, after news had come out that two of the guards that were supposed to be protecting the Depot had been critically wounded. Others gossiped about the fact that much of them were Terran just like them, something many had already seen during the battle of Shargara. Still the silent majority were undecided, as it was certain that the guards had not fled the premises of the Depot, and were still lurking around somewhere. Many were aware that the ground invasion would be the worse to come.
Goran stationed sharpshooters and marksmen on top of the buildings close to the southern edge of the Depot in anticipation of the walls that were to be breached. Infantry with lines made of machine gun wielders at the front and melee weapon holders at the back filled the bare ground between the walls and the buildings.
The first signs of the great battle appeared, as Reserve-formed arrows flew over the walls, raining down in the hundreds on the soldiers. A few were hit, marking the first bloodshed. Still the majority of them had been able to activate barriers ranging from level 10 to level 20, the strength that was sufficiently adequate to protect their heads.
“Gunners, tear down the walls! If they want to play that way, so shall we!” Goran cried. Although the man was a raider at heart, breaking into sites instead of defending them, the cries of his men and women brought back a certain kindle of inspiration from his youth in his heart.
Ivan repeated the order to the soldiers nearer to him, and quickly the walls collapsed amid the volley of thousands of rounds of artillery bombarding them. The Titanian soldiers that were just behind the wall were crushed under its weight, the result of the destruction of a construct produced by their own sister-in-arms.
The barrage continued for a minute or two, when by then the Titanians too had created powerful level 30 barriers, each protecting up to a hundred soldiers. They rushed forward over the ruins of the wall and bodies of their own comrades. They screamed ancient Titanian war cries in a language far different from the one they used presently, and had imprinted on both southern and northern Yeupisians to varying degrees over the years. The power of an ancient force pushed them forward as they broke through the first lines of machine gunners and their barriers, making fairly quick work of them even while the Terrans shredded apart the bodies of their comrades that had elected not to keep up barriers in favour of more firepower.
This was the difference between Terrans and Titanians. It wasn’t their height, the colour of their hair or eyes, or their places of origins. It was the fanaticism instilled in Titanian soldiers from childhood, making them completely subservient to the Empire from the moment they stepped on the battlefield. They were chess pieces for the Empire, to which they had no qualms. The older Terran soldiers, particularly the Free Army and the veterans among the Anti-Imperialists continued to press on. This was not something they were unfamiliar with. It was merely something they were forced to deal with.
However, upon seeing limbs flying, guts spilling out of stomachs, blood oozing all over the battlefield, many of the younger soldiers began to falter. They stepped backwards slowly, before turning around and making for a sprint. But to where? There was nowhere to hide except for the buildings, on top of which their own comrades with sniper rifles and Reserve-form bows and arrows were perched upon.
The southern man gave us orders, Goran thought grimly as he saw dozens of bodies darting past him.
“Anyone who attempts to desert the battle will be shot by the sharpshooters and marksmen!” the middle-aged commander, who was about three years younger than his friend Aulis Bakken and old enough to be the father of his co-leader Ivan, cried. “Where is your honor? Where is your pride? Would you rather your mothers and sisters, father and brothers stand at the end of their rifles instead of you?”
“H-He’s right!” Ivan agreed as he shot a Titanian soldier donning a sergeant's badge in the head, followed by slashing a second lieutenant with a sword belonging to one of his own men who had fallen moments prior. “Would you rather die at the hands of your comrades, or the hands of the enemy? Sharpshooters and marksman, pick off as many of the Titanians as you can but remember your duty to your homeland as well!”
The threat was real. A couple of soldiers who turned back were begrudgingly taken out by the men and women on top of the buildings, prompting the majority of the would-be deserters to return the way they came from, rather falling like warriors than like traitors.
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The tide began to shift little by little, but prolonging the stalemate was unsustainable. The Titanians continued to pour in through the gap in the walls in the thousands.
Stefan, having humiliated the behemoth Titanian earlier into submission, had felt brave and proud. But not any longer. He had been ordered away from Vigdis and towards the main battle, now that the power plant and by extension, the Depot were activated. Grief and heartache had seized him, his body reacting reflexively with his rifle in hand as a mob of Titanians seemingly competed to take him apart as he stared into the void. Many of them recognised the famed asset’s face, and even more felt the island of strong Reserve that emanated from his body.
“What the hell are you doing, kid?” a pair of hands slapped his shoulders from behind. “Are you waiting for death to come to you?”
Stefan turned his head to see the face of a Free Army soldier gazing into his soul.
“Death?” the word absentmindedly coming off his lips.
Death was in front of his eyes as his comrades were being cut down, and the droves of Titanians they were pushing back. He saw death in the eyes of his brother who had endured so much misery alone, in Gareth’s as he cut down Titanians with promising futures like paper near Marius, and in Anwen’s as she harboured a trauma that remained buried deep within her.
Death was everywhere. Death was necessary.
The boy was overcome with brand-new Reserve produced in his heart, flowing furiously through his veins. The need to be aware of his surroundings clicked in his mind. He dropped his rifle aside and picked up a weapon he was more comfortable with—an edged melee weapon, the sword of a dead comrade to be exact.
“I’ll give you all death!” he cried as he raised the sword above his head. He rushed forward, swinging it down through one Titanian’s body from head to groin. Shifting a single foot, he sliced another from shoulder to hip, the body falling to the ground in two sections.
“Rip through all of them!” a voice cried in his head as he cut down another Titanian body that was simply to slow to react to the speed of his footwork and swings. It was Ruben Holt’s.
“Put your heart and soul into it, lad!” another voice echoed in his head, three seconds and 10 bisected bodies later, belonging to the Anbieter.
“Be strong, Stefan!” Kallista Laine’s voice rang through her son’s mind.
The articulations produced by Stefan’s wounded and angry mind gave him even more power. One by one with no pause, Titanian bodies came down before they could even see the glint of his blade. Even the ones with guns were no match for his sudden speed and ferocity, moving from one spot to the next in the blink of an eye. There was nothing they could do to stop him. Even the few veteran Titanians that had been in the military since Emperor Halsten’s actual reign could compare him to one beast whom a company of 200 fine soldiers could only hope to kill.
Gareth Koppel, the thousand-man killer, the Angel Slayer, the Red Devil.
The boy only saw moving obstacles in his path, not living beings. At that moment he was set on killing. Nothing else. With such automatic thoughts guiding his every move, he was more like a machine than a man.
But even machines ran out of juice, and that happened just a few minutes after his violent frenzy started as the sounds of alarms pierced across the Depot.
“The IPLs are finally turning on!” a voice cried. It was someone from his side.
Stefan’s eyes blinked, and he saw thousands of Titanian soldiers scrambling to escape the way came from. The noise coming from a charging-up laser filled the air and a second later, a beam of pink-purple light radiating an extraordinary amount of heat appeared just a few dozen yards in front of the boy. When it disappeared a moment later, all he could see were the smoldering corpses of Titanian soldiers, killed instantly.
His eyes drifted down slightly. There was blood everywhere. Not just seeping from the many Titanians he’d just utterly slaughtered, but on his own body too. His face had scratches that had broken skin. His light armor had been penetrated, allowing gashes and cuts all over his arms, back and chest. There was a bullet in his left bicep. There was blood leaking from every single wound. He wanted to step forward, just to move away from the sight he had created. Instead he came crumbling to his knees. Darkness was all he saw as his upper body hit the ground.
--
Stefan opened his eyes up to a white space. His eyes drifted up and down and side to side. There was something off about this place. There were no walls, ceiling, or floor. It was all one continuous space with no beginning or end. He realised that he was seated, but when he tried to stand up, he came crashing to the ground with the chair. He couldn’t move his arms either when he understood that he was chained to the chair. The cold metal bore into his skin and muscles, his body completely bare except for a pair of trousers.
“Who did this to me?” he cried as he futilely thrashed around trying to wiggle his way out of the chains. “Where am I? Can anybody hear me?”
And then he heard a pair of calm footsteps coming his way from behind him. Was it the person who had him captive? Were they coming to torment him more?
He held his breath as the person circled around in front. All he could see of her—it was a woman, no doubt—were her boot-clad feet and a skirt that reached her ankles. She bent over, toggling with a key in her hand. The sound of jiggling and a click hit Stefan’s ears, and he felt the weight of the chains sliding off of his body.
“Wh-what’s going on?” Stefan said as he pushed the chains away from him, pulling himself to his knees.
“This is somewhere you shouldn’t be, Stefan.” the woman spoke with a gentle voice.