‘11 minutes. 10 times. Expected clear time…’
A rushing wind against her face, distant thunder beating the low ends not deafened, yells from below ignored because they we never for here. Everyone had their orders, their place. There was no time for distractions. Her mind racing as is at the implications imparted onto it, repeating the message given over and over so it couldn’t be forgotten. No older than sixteen and already at the front, already flying as fast as she could for longer than she’d even managed. But this was no place to train, only to give everything and then some. Tents and concrete and sand and beaten earth all spreading out below her, an armyscape of proportions unheard yet demanded. Stretching miles deep between her and her goal, and for miles upon miles across her periphery.
Her dirty blond hair, tied up and flowing behind her, caked in dust kicked up by trains of movers and carts. No time to shower it off or even keep it straight. A suit of meshed and plated metal faring just as filthy. Fiber colored and camouflaged grey simply because that was how it came off the line. And all of it signified with a haphazard velcro patch shaped like a round shield on her shoulder. She was a super, a hero of the League pressed into service, and she had a dire message to deliver.
’11 minutes. 10 times. Expected clear time…’
Her destination was impossible to miss, impossible to even think of when all this started. Its bulk ceasing this military industrial sprawl with a sudden vast slab of metal and gunpowder. A wall, The Wall, towering over everything. And sucking up all the output of this entire vast effort. Triple wide stairs zigzag up its back, the right side filled to the brim with soldier and supply, the left barren and awaiting the inevitable casualty and evacuation. Between them ran rail and pulley lines, tubes and ropes, end points for all that concrete and cart traffic. Clanking at the wall’s back with no hope of an end till the next shift was whistled in. The whir of machinery, of grunted effort, of powered purpose dominating everything. But not a single joule or watt allowed or had. Those had been rent away… at terrible cost.
Her final stop was upon her though, the raised lip of the wall not an obstacle expecting her. She focused, remembering what her mother taught her about stopping.
‘Visualize all that thrust you’ve been using. How it’s been moves you about. Then reverse it slowly but surely in whatever way feels right. And don’t worry about looking dumb doing it. It’s better than smashing into the ground at 90 miles an hour.’
She did what she had been told, felt that all over push she’d imparted upon herself. Like the air around her was hers and hers alone. Then let it abate and slowly press back upon her. Velocity gradually lowering, but not decelerating enough, so she pulled her feet up and revisualized that thrust. A countering push to desperately keeper from overshooting her landing. Her feet skimmed the helmets of the soldiers resting against the lip, hoping for reprieve by receiving sudden air rippling startle. She stumbled in the drag, decelerated too fast and off balance. Kevlar boots missing shotgun shell coated metal of her own hope and squeaking out over plexiglass revile. The clear coated platform turned landing strip hanging over the far end of the wall. Over the hell that it must keep back.
She fell forward and caught herself before tumbling end over end. Yet was stuck looking down at the darkness that the wall’s shadow created. The shadow that paled in comparison to the vantablack stain that had pooled up the wall below her. She forced her head away, but could not avoid the town beyond, the one sacrificed to this needed attrition. Lost completely to the horrors out there. Her breath caught as she remembered her first time seeing them. The way it had ripped its way up and over, the way its scaly kin boiled, the look on its face as it refused to just die… But she had to stop. She had to focus. The message.
‘10 minutes. 10 times. Expected clear time…’
She picked herself up and rose to meet its recipient. His back was turned and near blocked out the entire horizon, a similar suit of woven metal and fiber near just as dirty. Plates coated in Kevlar and topped off with a symbol reminiscent of the very wall he stood upon. His burnt orange hair short but haggard. If not for the overbearing smell of cordite and ash she would have winced at the implications already clear. He hadn’t been relieved either.
“Dad!!”
The man, towering over even the soldiers watching on behind her, turned to face his daughter.
“Aegis! What news has come?”
His smile, his booming tone, everything about him was joyous in demeanor, denying every bit of dire catastrophe that permeated the air. But still his face could hide none of the fatigue draped over him. His orange hued eyes were bagged and laden from days without meaningful sleep. His beard was scraggly, unshaven, and blackened with dust and powder charge. His suit was torn, scratched, and stained with old blood. Both no doubt his own and too many others’.
And yet still he smiled. Beaming down at his daughter without a care for anything but had been put before him.
“This is serious! We have a swarm coming that-“
“Good!!” The man took a proud stance. “I’ve been waiting all day for some action!”
“NO DAD!!!”
The girl gritted her teeth like this was far from the first time, staring into his eyes and demanding his attention more than his praise.
“This isn’t like the other ones!! They said it’s likely to be in the tens of thousands!! Like the entire damn cordon is falling on us!!!”
She was wide eyed, she couldn’t keep back the tears in her eyes, couldn’t let her dad just brave this news out. The soldiers listening on behind her mirrored her horror. They knew what awaited them, they knew it first hand, but to hear it out loud only lifted their fear up past what meager resolve they still clung to. The man knew as much, and bent down to his daughter’s glare. His own desperate to quiet her fear.
“It’s okay Aegis.” His boom turned to low reassurance and a hand pressed down on her shoulder. Down on that pain trying to come before it was real.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“We can handle it. We’ve handled every swarm before. We will handle this one too.”
He released, rose back up, and brought back up the joyous command he offered against the storm brewing before them. The rock unbreakable that will weather it for them.
“Now! Go inform the squad leaders, send the news down the line!”
She stared back at him, still unconvinced, but swiped away at the streaks on her face and turned away. The soldiers that had gathered up all looked to her, insignias slapped on helmets the only needed symbol. More plates of metal and kevlar bulking up their profiles into grey and black blobs, but they knew it was little more than desperate hope. Matte black auto shotguns resting every which way their more immediate determination, the smell of cordite and magnesium covering up every other possible stench. They stared back with tired eyes, with blank stares that could see for miles and yet see nothing but what their memories held. This conflict had gone on too long already.
“Recon says a wave’s coming in 10. The numbers look to be 10 times the norm. And… the expected clear time is… tomorrow at the earliest!”
Those looks deepened. Waves had stayed strong for hours before, demanded everything they had before. But a whole day was something beyond realistic. Something too much for them to-
“AEGIS!!”
All heads turned back, her father back standing tall at the center of his platform without a hint of fatigue left to exude. Arms staunch at his hips, stature hardened against the backdrop of the hell beyond. Against… Against an ever building column of smoke and dust.
“Better make that 5!!”
Her heart, the world, the whir of the safety still waiting behind. All of it sank and drowned, beaten away in the rumble carrying up over it all. The soldiers behind didn’t wait for the order, for confirmation or clear lines of sight. Leaders running down their lines and shouting with everything they had.
“GUNS UP, GUNS UP!!!”
The rails and pulleys squealed to life, pulled their payloads up into place. Skeletal turrets clanking up from the safe lip, crossing and being pushed into locking positions on the far side. Gunners clambering onto controls, pulled triggers to test spool their rotors for all the spring tension left over. Cannons needing every bit they had. Boxes were brought up and slotted into their bases, gears locking together and tightened in place. Mechanical batteries of the deepest desperation.
The girl knew she was in the way of this tightly wound choreography, of fresh defenders pushing forward to their dreaded places, but could barely bring herself to pull away. Fear driving her back and forth between helping and running. Her duty fighting better and focusing her back to that safe lip. Throwing her off the wall, yet keeping her there low and hovering over that edge.
“SWARM SPOTTED!!! GREEN 10!!!”
Spotters ran from their forward positions and flipped placards on the safe side, ten green and one red. Signals seen by all those stretching out behind, but looked to more especially by those farthest back pits. Thuds soon rising over the eroding rumble, the girl turning to that militarized expanse to see sequenced puffs of artillery fire from those farthest reaches. The ordinance screamed over, a continuous stream of screeching fire as frequent as the gunners could produce it.
It drove her low, hanging on to that lip with her head scrunched hard. Against the cacophony that this war had wrought. She could feel the rumble through the metal, the torrential stampede tearing toward them, even as the beat of the shells thundered against it. She could feel it all through the wall, this defiant drum getting beaten against. Every strike eating away at the resolve of those charged with its defense, yet still even she couldn’t take the cowering uncertainty. Her head pulled back up, worry splattered on her face as she look out to those awaiting. As her father spread his arms out over those crossing shell tracers with the true defiance of a hero indefatigable.
The far side of the wall started to glow in orange backlight, brighter and brighter till it was undeniably there. Spreading for as far as she could see down the wall’s inward curve. For miles and miles that this wall had been placed. Curiosity too much to bear, she rose up higher, shakily hovered to bear witness to its extent. The artillery keeping her flight low but awe denying even its danger. She saw, for as far as even her eyes could see, a massive field of translucent orange follow the wall’s outer edge. A wall upon a wall to block this hell’s advance. A power she held as well, yet never knew its true breadth. But just as quickly her awe was battered, as the rumble became physical manifestations of that hell.
Under a backdrop of fiery white smoke and torn skyward ground, the land ceased to remain static. Monstrous things of nightmare made real, ravenous to a fault yet unable to be sated, and nearly unkillable as their wounds merely regrew no matter how terminal. But now… now numbered beyond count.
The ruins beyond were clawed to dust in their wake, the stampede too close for that drum to hold still, and the roars tearing through the last of that resolve echoed into the stratosphere so no one could escape them. The wall heaved and shook as the leading edge clawed up it, like a freak wave had struck it and yet kept going. Solid metal, concrete, and hope meaning nothing to them. All being ripped apart in their single minded quest up. But finding no purchase as it finally hit its crest. As it finally hit that miraculous orange barrier.
Scaled horrors piled up, crushed against it, against one another. Claws rent metal and flesh alike without regard or care, but were stopped by the barest millimeter of pure energy. Pure invulnerability Hope seemed to find one good hold, but realism stymied this. The man was its source, its caller and holder. And he could only keep it up for so long. Yet… his haggard state seemed to be the least of his worries at the moment. A soft utterance underscoring the hellish scramble and drawing away his rather needed attention away to-
“Today… today? Hmmm.”
His thoughts though seemed clear as to his ultimate goal. Raising his head back up and unsheathing from that softness to rise to the boom that carried over all.
“Today…!! Today we will fight!! Today we will bleed!! We will suffer and strain against what wrath has brought against us!!”
Soldiers tightening their guns and sights on the roiling hell below them held back, looked up toward him like nothing else mattered but his words.
“But we will not just fight for ourselves!! Not just for our brothers and sisters standing beside us!! We fight for everyone that stands behind us!!!”
The man raised his head higher, the boom drowning out everything beyond. The entire section of the wall now looked toward him, unable to turn away.
“Today we fight for the miles behind us!!! For the people depending on everything from us!!!”
Those looks tightened, some resolve rising through the murky shell shocked surface.
“Today we fight to give them back their safe and happy lives!!! To give them back their hope for a brighter future!!!"
The girl landed down on the lip of the wall, taking in her father’s words in hope that it would drive her own fear away. And feeling her heart beat race louder than even those claws wanting it shredded.
“Today we put fire to scale!!! We throw back fear and strife to stand firm against that which seeks our end!!!”
“And Today!!!"
A flare unfathomable.
"We will show them they!!!"
Those grips tightened.
"Will never again threaten this world!!!”
And those guns spooling up to blister and locking on to everything needing obliterating below.
“So today!!!”
“May be the longest day!!!”
“Of any of our lives!!!”
“BUT TODAY!!!”
“WILL BE THE LAST DAY OF THEIRS’!!!!”
The wall erupted, yells of thousands meeting and beat out those hellish roars for all the air the stole. The girl yelling in kind as the man threw his arms down, as the barrier opened its abominable contents up to the waiting storm of fire and courage that poured down upon it. And the world shook in true defiance to the monsters that dared to feast upon it.
A world… yet unready for what they left behind.