Prime Minister Kamir Singh was an old man. He was tall, scrawny, with a long, neatly trimmed white beard; and before today, he had expected the nation he served would outlive him. By thousands of years, if he had anything to say about it.

But today.... today he stared at the ceiling of the bunker, buried beneath the outskirts of New Delhi; which were currently so much ruin and rubble; wondering how it had gone wrong so swiftly. He'd listened to the advice of both the old ones and his Secretary. Spent billions of dollars preparing; building bunkers for his people much like this one. Tanks and jets to fight the aliens; they'd even begun producing their own variation of the gauss rifles; they'd even created their own excellent targeting systems, testing them out using meta-humans who were roughly as fast as the Jotun who'd invaded years ago.

If he'd been asked a few months ago whether he was as prepared as China, he would have said yes. After all; he'd made sure every step of the way to have enough firepower to ensure that the imperialist Chinese wouldn't be able to conquer India. The bunker shook with another impact. The fighting was still going on overhead; but all coordination, all communication, was gone. He had no idea what was going on; only that within the first few hour of landing the enemy had triggered some sort of jamming device; and resistance had crumbled. Were his forces too reliant on the systems the jamming took out? Was it bad luck that the enemy had struck in just the wrong place and time... landing amidst a wash of plasma and death amidst India's most supposedly secure positions, rather than doing as they had with China and advancing across the border?

The last communication they had was that Pakistani forces were advancing on the Jotun rear. But.... he didn't have much hope.

He'd seen videos of piles of skeletons, incinerated by plasma fire. Millions of them. His nightmare which had begun when he'd learned that the bio-weapons lab they'd been experimenting on a modified version of Ebola in was breached, and that the first signs of the virus's spread had already been discovered... just seemed as if it would never end. He would die here, amidst the ruins of his people.

Another impact. The world shook; and he could feel a sudden rush of air as the ventilation system kicked into overdrive, compensating for abrupt changes in pressure. The door to the bunker was open. They... were coming.

Choosing to meet death on his feet, Singh rose to his feet, straightened his collar, and marched towards the entrance to the bunker. Two of his guards, who had been waiting outside his door, equally frightened, took heart and followed, trying to hide their own fear as they checked their gauss rifles.

And at the entrance of the bunker... a massive, extremely muscular man, perhaps six and a half feet tall, dark of skin, with a long curly beard and a strange breast-plate on under.. a toga.... was leaning against the wall, looking down at one of the young women among the vault's guards... flirting with her and joking with the soldiers.

Singh blinked and drew to an abrupt stop. Was that...

The man turned at Singh's entrance, and clapped his hands together, the young woman blushing a bit as she backed away; her hands had been almost touching one enormous, glowing, bicep. "Ahh, there we are! The man himself! I'm sorry for the late arrival. We'd expected to be defending europe, and I... had a bit of a breakdown after the bombs hit. One of my favorite daughters, so many of my grandchildren... well. We've all lost family today."

Singh glanced at the sheared-off bolts that had secured the heavy steel bunker door, then back to the Olympian. "Zeus. You are quite right. We have lost... too much, really. What brings you here? I am grateful, of course, for the aid. My homeland is in dire need this day."

"I'm here because you might be the last survivor who has the middle part of the nuclear codes. Your people need to use tactical nukes to finish off the capital ships after we make a path through the lesser forces. They were supposed to go out as soon as the Jotun attacked, but the enemy managed to break the line of communication down so that... well. As much as Apollo's plan was a good one... General Ramesh wanted to use a nuke on his position. Take out three enemy starships and most of the Jotun. Finish the war for India in one terrible blow, unfortunately dying with many of his men in the process. But... the request for the codes never reached anyone."

The prime minister stared at Zeus in horror. He had no less than seventeen deputies with those codes, just in case. ".... One of my people was with Ramesh, and had the codes. I... assume she died?"

"In the first volley. And... virtually every soldier in that position. I'm sorry."

He had no way to verify what Zeus was saying. This could be some sort of mad-man. Those certainly looked like his enchanted javelins, though; the ones that had brought down Jotun hovertanks during the last Jotun war. each one converting into a devastating lightning bolt that seemed to spear its way through any nearby enemies when thrown.

He took a deep breath. "As much as I want to believe you, I can't give my codes to some stranger I've never met. I can, however, give them to my guards to send with you... or accompany you myself. In fact, if I'm the last one who knows them..."

He had them memorized. But... he'd planned it out, just in case he died and needed to pass them on. He reached into his pocket, withdrawing a small silver card.. and looked around for a moment. He handed it to one of his bodyguards. "Stay here. Stay safe. Protect those with your life."

And then turned to Zeus. "There. Take me with you. I will put in my part of the codes myself."

The man studied him for a moment. "...I don't think you want to do that, Prime Minister. Me and my olympians will survive being as close to these nukes going off as we'll need to be. We need to draw them in close to where we have them, and be ready to set them off in a moment. We can't just set a timer."

"Then so be it. Better I than a younger man, with decades left to live... or worse, India herself."

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

***

Deep in the heart of Antartica, in frigid lands that humans required massive effort and substantial equipment to survive, a group of Jotun were standing around a deep, icy valley; one of them looking down, watching a structure being assembled of hundreds of pre-fabricated sections; as dozens of Jotun starships, massive behemoths built to eradicate entire armies, with a host of missile and plasma weapons, millions of attack drones... lay in loose, disorganized fashion around it.

All of them were damaged in orbit; all of them had sustained even more damage on the way down. Most were still at least 80% combat-effective.

The soldiers looked up, as yet another of the vessels came flying over the mountains, leaving a trail of white-grey smoke behind it; and slammed into the ice with a crash, barely missing hitting a group of smaller craft that had been landed nearby. The starship was... radioactive. Badly damaged, and not from leaving orbit. This... was not a good sign.

***

King Jotun inhaled deeply, feeling the crisp, cold air of the human world fill his lungs, standing on the ice beneath one of his warships. The soldiers around him all seemed... beaten. Broken. And well they should be. He'd chosen some of his greatest, oldest, most competent leaders to venture forth, leading his armies... and one by one, they had fallen. Now? He was being guided by some band of neophytes he barely knew.

Steam rose from his carapace as he settled in on the ice, looking at the three nervous technicians; mere technicians. Most of his higher-ranking men were dead, or working to repair damaged starships. Which would be all of them. Not a single Jotun vessel had made it out completely unscathed so far. He turned to them. "Report. I've had you review all of our data. What do we have?"

"Calim has survived, albeit badly injured. His ship has just returned, and he will be reporting to you once he recovered. His... fleet came down over the ocean and moved in from the west, encountering extremely heavy resistance in the form of surface, waterborne warships. His own ship was struck by a railgun projectile, which led to his injury, and after all of his ships were damaged, he withdrew; losing two. One of which is currently in orbit, having been boarded by a Titan and left the planet to hopefully take him out of the fight. He still has over twenty thousand of his troops; he took heavy casualties in the initial battle, but retreated in good order."

Jotun sighed. Sharqa was dead, along with the rest of his generals. Almost as old as he was, mother of thousands, one of the mightiest females he'd ever met. But... he still had one of his old friends. "Your assessment of the battle. Should he have retreated?"

"...He could have destroyed the human navy, without question. But it would be a crippled, ruined remnant of his fleet that arrived. We could have done some damage, but both claws would have been destroyed."

He nodded, and turned to the next technician. "And your assessment?"

"The assault on Asia initially seemed promising. Our forced landed in Mongolia and southern Pakistan, caused massive damage for minimal casualties. Then our forces advanced into China and... were lost almost to the last. We dealt massive damage to their armed forces and civilians, but that entire claw is listed as either destroyed or missing. The claw that departed Pakistan into India was, initially, successful; swift movement and destruction of their communications infrastructure allowed them to remove the bulk of them quickly.... but then backup from surrounding regions arrived. Pakistani military and metahumans of significant power from various regions came in... once they managed to detonate nuclear devices on our starships, our other forces were wiped out. The number of survivors reaching Antarctica from the asian conflict number in the low hundreds."

The steam rising from his carapace grew more intense, as he turned to the third technician. "..And our operations on the less defended southern continents?"

"... My king. I highly recommend that we depart this world with all forces that can escape, and remain in space. Our armed forces invading the 'Africa' continent have been... consumed... by a horrific amalgamation being controlled by a local meta-human. Only scattered attack craft and soldiers survive, all in hiding. The South American forces managed to withdraw after taking massive casualties; they are the second most intact after the claws that withdrew from the assault on North America's west coast. We will likely only have perhaps sixty thousand soldiers to return with. But... we cannot win this war with what we have. We need to bombard this place from orbit with rocks until nothing lives."

"...All projections indicated total victory. We would sweep the enemy with trillions of drones and massed fire from our Assault Ships, mop up with our lighter Attack Craft and soldiers, and emerge with, likely, a few losses due to enemy nukes. What happened? How did things get so.... insane?"

"Our attacking forces have been met by several threats we did not anticipate. Ghosts of some sort; not able to do much damage, appearing to be warriors from this world's past, have emerged. They are resistant to most attacks, but seem to fade after either taking some level of harm, or doing enough harm to our own forces. More ordinary necromantic zombies in the hundreds of millions as well; ranging from mere distractions to..."

*The Technician looked at the sky. "One powerful zombie left orbit, and destroyed itself in the process of killing the Chain of Eternity. Ones of that level of power seem vanishingly rare, but a few exist, amidst ones that our soldiers can crush by the thousands. And, of course..."

He grimaced. "The machines. Our forces are still hunting down their production centers, but... the casualties those robots inflicted were horrific. Even once the Disrupter was activated they began employing nearby humans to allow them to identify targets.... and of course, employing the Disrupter prevented us from using drones in the battles. Various individual, powerful metahumans caused significant losses, but aside from that one outlier in Africa, most of them were inconsequential compared to these issues."

The technician looked out over the horizon. "...The amalgamation in Africa... if its capable of reaching orbit, we'll need massed fire from a dozen or more ships to ensure it can't close in and continue... eating... more of our ships. I've sent word to the fleet to stay in close formation, but on the other side of the moon."

Jotun glanced around at the ships in the valley. The most painful of those losses was the Chain. There were over two hundred billion Jotun out there; they could build another fleet like this, given time; or more, even; they only refrained from building larger fleets to avoid Imperial attention. But... the Chain had been their best chance at someday killing the Emperor. Without her... whatever that monster was, it would have been better if it killed Jotun instead. In fact, perhaps it would be best if Jotun never left Earth; one of his heirs might prove a better leader. "It will take days to get most of these ships ready to reach orbit. Hmm." He considered the handful of undamaged craft that he had, which could make it into and out of the atmosphere without issues. "We will begin withdrawing much of our forces, maintaining a single base here as we repair those craft which have de-orbited. With all of their orbital infrastructure gone, the humans likely don't even know we're here."

He rubbed his claws together amidst a handful of snow. "We will be trapped in this star system for a time, repairing our fleet. Have the captains here on the ground relay which ships need more than a week to repair. If it takes that long... we'll salvage them for parts to speed the other repairs, and let their wreckage be destroyed when we bombard this place. We'll need to choose a different sacrifice for the Emperor; we can't leave anything alive here."