The world of Omen loomed far below, its rainforests and rolling hills a pleasing reminder of home for Dao. Poslush was a very similar world, if more affluent, its buildings constructed from metals and stones from all corners of their space, with the enormous city of Sunsword’s Triumph as its beating heart. Looking down at the homeworld of the Ovinis, Dao could almost see the vaunted and venerable halls of the Combine’s capital city around her.
Maybe once this whole terrible war was over, she could take some of the humans to see it. They seemed like they would be nice enough, if they didn’t refuse civilization so vigorously.
“Ma’am, we’ve a communique from an incoming Combine fleet. They say they’re from Daggersworld; Her Dominance has approved their coming to your assistance.” the communications officer called loudly.
“A Squireworld?” Dao asked semi-incredulously. “Her Dominance can’t be serious.”
“Her Dominance is, ma’am.” the officer said, a sheepish look on his face.
Dao sighed. “If that is what she wants, let it be so. Accept their help.”
“Aye,” the officer saluted, punching in the response. Meanwhile, Dao tried to think happy thoughts at the prospect of having to deal with a Squireworld’s denizens; no sane Poslushi wanted anything to do with the zealots. Dao vividly remembered a certain incident in the officer’s academy when one of her classmates from First Sunlight suffered from a nervous breakdown because she was convinced that the Tenth Warlord, that most cruel king whose dominion was shattered by Sunsword’s army, had somehow returned from the grave and was telling her to hurt herself. Later on, the Underjudge she served was arrested for running a cult, for lack of a better word, that placed the Venerable Ancestor as a god of the Poslushi and the Warlord as some arch-demon of evil, the exorcism of which could only be achieved by ritual meditation (or the giving of a hefty sum of money to the leader). Granted, it was an extreme example, but it was an example nonetheless.
A few minutes later, the radar officer spoke up. “They’ve arrived, ma’am!”
“Numbers?”
“I’m seeing three thousand total on scans, ma’am!”
“Ma’am, they’re hailing us.” the communications officer barked.
“Of course they are,” Dao said, her antennae drooping, “on the projector.”
Flickering into existence from the disc on the floor was an image of a Poslushi female, a little shorter than Dao, wearing an officer’s uniform, her skin a beautiful polished iron color. At her foot stood a male attendant in a flowing robe, his face obscured by a traditional cloth veil. Once upon a time, it was codified in law that all males wear such garments, but that was centuries ago, and the Squireworlds were the only ones to observe such practices nowadays.
“Greetings, Overbattlematron. I am Battlematron Macuahuitl of the Elnadar Brood.” the female said, kneeling.
“I’ve heard that you’ve been sent to my aid?” Dao asked.
“Yes, ma’am; Her Dominance has seen fit that I join your quest.” Macuahuitl said, bowing her head.
Dao wasn’t about to take any chances. “Do you swear your fealty unto me?”
“My body is yours to break; my blood yours to spill; my loyalty unchallenged and unchallengeable, in the name of the Venerable Ancestor and all her children.” the Battlematron incanted the traditional oath of fealty.
“Good, then. How many of you are there?”
“Our soldiers number ten million, and we’ve some one hundred capitals in the fleet. All carriers, of course; we wouldn’t be the Squireworlds without our dear Knights, would we?”
Dao thought about this for a moment. She wasn’t entirely sure what help the Aerial Knights would be in spaceborne combat; they were Aerial Knights after all. However, she knew that their fighters were still capable of spaceflight. Maybe if she had their craft modified, she could extend their range enough to harass CAST’s craft while out of the range of their horrid self-steering torpedoes. “The Knights will be a great help indeed for when we make our counterattack.”
Macuahuitl suddenly seemed to remember something. A grimness fell across her face and her antennae dipped down. “Ah, yes, speaking of, the High Judge…”
Dao preempted her. “I imagine she doesn’t agree with my decision to retreat?”
“No,” Macuahuitl spoke, “no, she doesn’t. More specifically, she has made it clear that you will find for yourself a punishment when it’s feasible to do so. You’ve done yourself a great dishonor in retreat, in my opinion.”
Macuahuitl wasn’t telling Dao anything new, but this was as good a time as any to make her stance clear. “I intend to make my case to the High Judge that the very fact that my punishment must be postponed is reason enough that I shouldn’t face punishment in the first place. Retreat is only cowardice when the fight can still be won.”
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Dao paused, then said her next few words very carefully. “And, Battlematron, you would do very well to understand the difference between prudence and dishonor, and not to jump to conclusions about either.”
Macuahuitl cast her eyes down. “Yes, ma’am; my apologies, ma’am.”
“You are forgiven. Now, if you would join your fleets with mine, I believe we have no further business.”
Macuahuitl saluted. “It shall be done.”
“Dismissed, Battlematron.” Dao waved her hand, the hologram dissipating just as quickly as it had come. Then, she turned to one of her attendants.
“Inform the Oxilini Undermagistry of Thought and Word that they are to start drafting my legal defense. I’ve no intention of facing the sword for helping the nation.”
—
Over the night, the smell had intensified exponentially. Even with his gas mask on, Johann could barely muster himself to breathe, and whenever the wind blew in his direction from the great pile, he had to convince himself that suffocation wasn’t a desirable alternative. The work of loading decomposing corpses into neat lines for counting and disposal was backbreaking, but it also came with a terrible, rotten feeling, like no matter how much he washed himself, he would never be truly clean. There was no telling just how many people had been thrown into the pyres, but it couldn’t be less than a few hundred. Still, though he worked tirelessly, Johann couldn’t help but notice that there wasn’t a single piece of jewelry to be found anywhere near the bodies.
The bone-shaking blast of a horn from behind caught Johann’s attention, and he looked up to see an armored personnel carrier towing a long trailer rolling down the street towards him, its treads making a loud clattering noise as they left marks in the pavement at regular intervals. Poking out of a hatch on the turret was an enlisted man wearing the same mask as Johann, looking out at the pile.
“Hey!” Johann called. “Really could’ve used you a few hours ago!”
“We were busy,” the soldier replied, “the minefield along the 2188 wasn’t going to clear itself.”
The APC pulled onto the curb to stop, revealing two large open-backed trucks full of men behind it. As they too came to a halt, most of the men who disembarked had the uniforms and equipment of combat engineers, though Johann could also see a trio of people in dark blue armor, the word PRESS printed across their torsos in bold white lettering. One of them was carrying a camera, and while the engineers hastily began to unpack and assemble the mobile crematorium the APC had brought, the three journalists began their work as well.
“Hello, world, I’m James Hadley with PANOPTICON Media, providing live coverage of the Polegate Front for those of you further from the action,” a man with salt-and-pepper hair spoke somberly into a microphone in English, looking directly into the lens of the camera. His voice was rather therapeutic; Johann didn’t mind having something to listen to in the midst of the horror. “I’m standing in what was once the city of Spitzerstadt, capital of the German planet of Kormoran. One week ago, this planet was under the occupation of the Poslushi empire, but with the sudden retreat of their forces following the disastrous Second Battle of Novoarkhangelsk, the full extent of the horrors of Poslushi occupation have been revealed as German forces retake their planet.”
Meanwhile, Johann continued to drag corpse after corpse from the heap, breaking open the charcoal shell with a shovel in hopes of finding someone who was still in good enough shape to identify, if, indeed, they had any close kin left to do so. He laid them out on the concrete, hands crossed over their stomachs, in as close to a peaceful state as he could give them. He would’ve covered each with a sheet, but they’d run out of tarps hours ago.
“Witnesses report that as it became clear to the Poslushi that not only could they not sustain their presence on the planet, but that they didn’t have the time to take their slaves with them, they shot all humans they could find before looting and attempting to incinerate their bodies in piles such as the one currently behind me. More bodies are pulled out by the hour, as the German Army prepares the facilities for the respectful cremation of its fallen countrymen. The mass grave at Spitzerstadt is only one of dozens of confirmed sites like it around the planet, with the estimated dead stretching into the…”
“She’s ready to go!” one of the engineers barked. Looking over, Johann could see that the enormous furnace was already set up with three human-sized openings, the whole machine hooked up to a microfusion reactor whose plasma could vaporize an adult human in some thirty seconds. At the same time, a small swarm of men carrying stretchers was descending on the orderly rows of bodies, scooping them up and returning them, one by one, to be slid into the crematorium’s three loading chutes.
“Hey. Whadda you think they’re doing taking pictures of it?” Hiedrich said, tapping Johann’s arm and pointing at the journalists. They had stopped broadcasting and retrieved smaller cameras from their packs, snapping photos of the dead in the pile, in the rows, and finally as they went down the chute to be converted into the wispy white vapor that was starting to fade into the clouds above.
“It’s photos for the tribunals, I guess. Once this is all over, I bet there’ll be a hell of a lot of executions.” Johann said, his face pensive beneath the mask.
“I’d imagine museums would be paying a pretty penny for history like this.” Hersch noted.
“They always have, haven’t they?” Johann said, wringing his hands out. Upon further inspection, they were covered in blisters, and now that he thought of it, he was drop-dead exhausted, but just too focused to notice.
“You all take a breather; the engies will handle this from here.” the man in the APC called. Johann needed no further encouragement, setting down the body he was carrying and shambling towards an empty corner store. He hadn’t felt this bad since waking up after the evacuation from Omen.
Johann thanked every deity he knew when he found that the bathroom sink still worked, but he didn’t do so for very long, as he proceeded to scrub himself down quickly. Normally, he would’ve rubbed his hands bloody to get the stink off, but he was too tired to even care about that. Laying out his bedroll on the linoleum tiles between aisles, he didn’t even bother taking off his gas mask before laying down; it wasn’t like he really wanted to smell the full force of several hundred rotting corpses anyways. The moment his head touched the soft padding of the sleeping bag, all his thoughts left him and he subconsciously curled into a ball, fast asleep in an instant.