At first, the strange weather around the city of Destiny, Florida had not garnered much attention. Hurricanes were a thing - especially in Florida - and such a small one was barely even worth mentioning. Then the weirdness had intensified. A sudden increase of both temperature and air pressure had hit the local atmosphere from nowhere, humidity had hit full saturation in mere minutes and electromagnetic interference worse than the worst lightning storms had scrambled weather sensors in the entire region.
Meteorologists had drawn the attention of the authorities to the phenomena at about the same time every signal in and out of the area had simply vanished. Cell phones failed, hard-lines failed, radar and lidar failed, satellites specifically designed to see through clouds saw nothing. Even if that had been the extent of it, a great number of people across the nation would have dropped everything they had been doing to investigate. It had not. A constant, stable source of both higher pressure and temperature fed into the surrounding air masses, majorly impacting the entire region. Lightning storms, twisters, abnormally intense rainfall, hail and similar extremes spread further and further as the weather system tried to equalize but couldn't.
The plans and predictions of the Federal Emergency Management Agency had not accounted for any of that, and the entire Region Four personnel had been mobilized in short order. Urban Search and Rescue and Mobile Emergency Response Support units were scrambled to the region along with units from the National Guard, spreading out to help cities and towns struck by the slowly expanding front of extreme weather. When military drones were sent to the apparent source of the phenomena and did not return, it was decided that the evacuation of the surrounding areas took precedence until they had more information about what was going on.
As the bulk of FEMA and the National Guard went to work, dozens of smaller investigation teams were sent to gather intel. When every single one of those teams, all highly trained and prepared for the worst environmental conditions, failed to report both FEMA and the military came to the natural conclusion that it had to be enemy action. Yes, weather control might still be in the realm of fantasy. Yes, there was no scientific explanation as to how what they were seeing was done. That didn't change the fact that it was too consistent to be random happenstance, too complete and uniform in affecting communications to be anything but deliberate.
Military assets from no less than eight states were mobilized, with a heavy emphasis on ground forces and support units as weather conditions sharply impacted the effectiveness of aircraft while the communications and sensors blackout seemed practically designed to inhibit drones, missiles and other unmanned units. For the first time in over a generation, the most advanced military in the world was working with no information, no concrete plan, not even an inkling of enemy capabilities. This led to a cautious approach, especially after the complete loss of all scouts. Instead of charging into an unknown, potentially deadly situation, the army dug in. Fortifications were raised, artillery units were brought in, supplies and ammunition were stockpiled as the closest possible to a secure perimeter was established against the 'anomaly'. This proved to be a wise decision when the first enemy units attacked.
What at first seemed to be very small, highly maneuverable drones that shone in thermal sensors as soon as they came out of the blacked-out region caused great confusion, disbelief and fear when caught on visual cameras. The appearance of small, winged humanoids that could throw blasts of fire caused quite a few analysts to gape or even panic and some of the more religious civilian leadership to be paralyzed with indecision.
For the boots on the ground however, the situation was simpler and they'd had a week to dig in, prepare and get used to prior weirdness. Plus the majority of the younger generation had been mentally conditioned for years to shoot at monsters by both movies and computer games so there was far less chaos than there might have otherwise been. A storm of bullets and light missiles saw the enemy quickly wiped out and once everyone saw that no matter how alien or monstrous the enemy could still die, discipline was restored.
When an entire army of zombies came out of the mists, the military faced them with discipline and overwhelming firepower, winning with minimal casualties. The only serious threat proved the enemy's ability to strike down aircraft with lightning bolts of all things, though at ranges more limited than modern artillery, let alone missiles. Morale soared despite the dismal weather and preparations and plans were made for a counter-strike... then the meteorologists notified the military that the abnormal weather was beginning to weaken.
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Two RQ-4B Global Hawk high-altitude drones flew out from Atlanta less than an hour after the unnatural weather phenomena over the city of Destiny begun to subside. The great distance from the combat theater was not an issue with their operational range of over fourteen thousand miles and their slow climb to their flight ceiling of over sixty thousand feet far from prying eyes was deemed more important. Equipped with the best electro-optical sensors available for high-altitude drones and a precision coded GPS supplemented with an advanced inertial navigation system, they were the best option to scout the enemy-controlled territory without being hindered by lingering interference or risking lives to unknown defensive capabilities.
Two and a half hours later, the drones entered the presumed envelope of the enemy's anti-air defenses at a height of sixty-four thousand feet, taking advantage of thermal drafts and unnaturally thick atmosphere created by the enemy's weather manipulation. While thermal and radar detection was still scrambled entirely even by the thin traces of mist remaining, their electro-optical systems worked just fine. Designed to accurately scan tens of thousands of square miles for targets as difficult as individual insurgents under camouflage, the two drones took in the state of the city in fifteen minutes, transmitted the data back to Mission Control, then loitered at their max altitude. With a remaining endurance of thirty-plus hours, they could provide updates on the situation, as well as targeting coordinates.
Back in Mission Control, analysts fell over the data, fed them to computers, compared with existing information of the city's state before the event. The results were... not positive. Two thirds of the buildings had been gutted, more than half completely ruined, and lots of the remainder showed various levels of damage. The streets were cratered in thousands of places, the burned or exploded remains of vehicles both within and around the city explaining why there had been no refugees over the ten days the storms had lasted; the enemy had deliberately targeted every attempt to evacuate as well as every attempt from outside to help. Preliminary calculations pointed towards nearly two hundred thousand dead, with two thousand being emergency response and intervention crews.
More alarming still was the new construction. The entirety of the city center had completely disappeared, not even ruins remaining from the original buildings. They'd been replaced by a citadel of black walls and bulky, windowless fortifications half a mile in diameter. Its perimeter wall was fifty feet tall ten thick and of a completely seamless, uniform construction. It lacked any decoration whatsoever and despite its rough medieval style it was more like a modern curtain wall writ large than anything else. Three cylindrical towers even taller and twice as thick as the wall were attached on the wall's interior on the northern side, with two more such towers in the South.
The area within was completely cut off, with neither gates nor other passages in evidence, and was taken up by twenty-three bulky, two-story buildings that looked more like domes of black stone than anything else. Those still lacked windows but they did have entrances, one half-sunken passage large enough for a truck to drive through each. The enemy buildings were marked as priority one targets as soon as the analysts noticed the steady stream of enemy forces coming out of them, with none coming in. They had to be production centers of some sort and given how the enemy had walled them in of critical importance to their forces. With how the entire installation and surrounding areas were occupied by thousands of the enemy's troops despite all their earlier losses, the enemy's production speed for what was a hastily built foothold in US territory was deemed an even greater threat than their weather-manipulation abilities.
Outside the main installation, lines of fortification spread out to the surrounding city like spokes in a wheel. Each line consisted of a shorter, thinner wall with smaller towers built every few hundred feet. There were eight of those spokes, each extending a good half-mile beyond the primary fortification, with all but one spoke having six smaller towers along its length and two towers at the end. The eight spoke looked unfinished, both towers at the end lacking the car-sized statues of monstrous humanoids at their peaks. The possibility of the statues being living beings was discussed but discarded due to their complete uniformity and lack of movement. Until further information could be gleaned, HQ would err on the side of caution and treat them as some sort of defense system.
Far more attention was focused on the actual enemy forces within and without the fortress. With the mist all but cleared, the revelation of the enemy's ground troop positions and patrol routes across the city as well as nearly fifty aerial units the size of fighter jets but the shape of giant birds made every single human aware of the information eager for payback. The images and data were examined, analyzed, then examined again but all pointed towards a single conclusion; the enemy used neither vehicles nor obvious artillery and his ground forces were equipped with medieval weapons. No matter how dangerous their numbers might make them - and at nearly a hundred thousand units they were plenty dangerous - or their melee capabilities, their lack of ranged attack was going to prove decisive.
Because the heavy artillery had just arrived.
xxxx xxxx
Twenty-five miles from the city, heavily defended artillery parks had been set up. Prior encounters with the enemy's ground forces as well as intelligence on their patrols showed that their infantry could sustain speeds in excess of thirty miles an hour for prolonged periods and forty miles an hour for short bursts thus protection against attack from possible enemy commandos or air units was necessary. The standard doctrine of operating self-propelled artillery in pairs in the wilderness, ready to stop and fire or start moving within 30 seconds would be insufficient in case of surprise close attack. At the same time, each one of the ten artillery parks had a separation of five miles from any other, making massed attacks against all of them hopefully impossible without the enemy having to split their forces and be engaged and defeated in detail by more maneuverable, faster vehicles and gunships. Finally, each artillery park was designed with quick evacuation in mind, with both ground troops and vehicles capable of hitting the road within sixty seconds in case of emergency or overwhelming ground assault headed their way.
In those artillery parks, coming from as far away as Washington, carried in by air or driven in over the past week, came ninety-two M109 Paladins. The 155mm self-propelled howitzers represented a significant percentage of the country's entire mid-range artillery capabilities, all that could be mobilized on relatively short notice. Recent upgrade programs made them capable of firing up to 40 miles away at rates of six rounds per minute, capable of delivering a 45lb warhead within twelve feet of a designated target.
Real-time targeting data were sent by the recon drones in the field, adjusted by computers and technicians in the fire direction center, then targeting solutions sent. Ninety-two guns spoke almost as one, firing five percent as many rounds every ten seconds as had been fired in the units' entire history. Flying at over twice the speed of sound, by the time the first shells struck, half a thousand more would be in the air.
xxxx xxxx
The core of Mavethan war doctrine was built, as with all army level magical warfare, around thematic Divination. Most thematic magic could create information within its field without using scrying or sensory spells to actually gather said information; fire mages knew and could predict all forms of heat and flame, weather mages were aware of disturbances in the air down to individual sounds or breaths or obstruction of air currents by an invisible opponent, light mages could see from various perspectives in both present and future. Based on violence, naked force, Mavethan Divination was both simpler and far more nuanced when it came to war.
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With the Divination-barring measures faded, as he stood in the depths of his half-built fortress, Legate Mot breathed out the senses of the mundane world and breathed in the realities of War. He no longer needed to contact his forces individually or even in groups; as instruments of violence and force forged under his authority they were but extensions of himself. He did not need to scout for enemies, for enemies were but another source of violence aimed at him and thus a vehicle through which to expand his awareness. He could even see individual actions as pertained to threat and violence, the greater such potential the further away the source became known and the earlier a warning he got. In a way, it was a vastly improved form of the simple danger sense cantrips he'd cast as a novice a hundred and thirty years before.
As such, he'd seen the artillery attack coming the moment the enemy's hostile intentions crystallized into specific orders of applied violence. A Centurion with a mere decade of experience and still unenhanced ability to handle information would have been overwhelmed by the scope of the engagement, but Mot had been in grander battlefields many times. The meaning of each unit's actions were like single letters on a page, which was why to achieve the rank of Tribune one needed the ability to read a page in a single heartbeat then translate that ability to battlefield command through training. Mot had made Tribune three score years before; the enemy's actions were as clear to him as an after-action report.
A less seasoned commander might not have believed the report of course, or failed to understand it. Mavethan battle-magic, with it's god-like battlefield awareness and direct control of summoned beings tended to breed feelings of superiority or delusions of godhood in many of its users. Those died young, drunk on power and the mistaken perception of invulnerability, especially during invasions to other Realms when wildly different magical or technological paradigms opposed their aggression. It was precisely why Mot had spent much of his time interrogating the locals about their military's capabilities, the second reason he'd delayed a major confrontation after the requirement to build up supernatural influence and resources. Many of those locals had answered eagerly for a chance at learning magic or getting immortality for them and their families, trifling requests Mot had readily and honestly fulfilled. He was by no means an expert on the enemy, but he knew roughly what they were capable of.
The moment those guns - what a vulgar term - fired, he had some idea of what was to come... so he waited. Given their speed, the first projectiles would be arriving within sixty heartbeats. Thirty heartbeats before they did, he directed his forces to scatter. It was not like giving commands under the anti-divination but more like taking a running step. Just as each one of the six hundred and sixty six muscles in his body moved differently individually yet in perfect harmony as a whole at an idle thought so did the hundreds of combat lines of infantry break up at his will. Moving with the smooth, tireless precision only the undead possessed, some units moved as much as six hundred cubits in that time.
Curiously, the incoming shells adjusted course mid-flight. Far less than true homing projectiles perhaps, but they weren't the dead rocks hurled by total primitives either. The Legate could read the intent behind the adjustment, an attempt to follow his units' movements. It was why he'd commanded the scattering to begin with. By the time the steel rain fell down there would not be a single unit closer than twenty cubits to another. According to his sources, ammunition was a serious concern to his enemies. They might vastly exceed the ranges he could offer reprisal from, but if they could hit only a few thousand targets out of the hundred thousand and more he could bring to bear every day, what did it matter?
Moments later, the steel walls of the fortress vibrated, a deafening, lasting explosion of sound conducted through them that could crack glass and shatter the eardrums of mortal men. Over a hundred shells of the initial barrage of five hundred had targeted the immobile fortifications, because of course it had. The enemy was by no means stupid, merely unaware of what they were facing as the Legate had planned. Mot had left mortality behind long ago and the bastion of conjured steel he commanded from was vastly tougher than the flimsy constructs of brick and mortar the locals used; it would take far more than a few small explosions to seriously damage either.
xxxx xxxx
The two RQ-4B Global Hawk high-altitude drones recorded the first major battle the US military had engaged in its own soil in over two hundred years with mechanical apathy. Images were sent back for real-time preliminary analysis to no less than seven different facilities from theater command to the HQ in Atlanta to Raytheon civilian contractors and drone operators even further away. The accuracy and damage was evaluated by both computers and human eyes before a verdict was sent to Mission Control and the shelling ceased after the twenty-second of thirty-nine salvos the M-109 Paladins had the onboard capacity for.
Of the hundred thousand plus enemy targets in the field, six hundred and seventy-one were destroyed. Of the five enemy buildings targeted, four production centers and the primary fortification, none suffered more than superficial damage despite over a hundred confirmed hits in each. Analysis of the damage patterns revealed the buildings weren't made of black stone or similarly archaic materials but solid steel, thick enough that its total thickness could not be guessed at because the buildings' armor had not been penetrated once.
This caused significant concern at all levels of the military leadership, for several reasons. The unnatural powers of the enemy or the alien beings making their forces were not easily grasped but sheer toughness was something simple, something understood. In the opening salvos of a single battle the M-109 Paladins had fired half as many shells as in that unit type's entire existence and the enemy had not even blinked. They would run out of ammo before actually hurting the enemy.
Secondary artillery units fifty-five miles out got orders to engage, even as permission requests climbed up the ladder of authority for "special" ordnance dispensations...
xxxx xxxx
Forty-seven M270 MLRS and three times their number of the newer M142 HIMARS were spread out over several low hills at the fifty-five-mile mark from the enemy base. At this distance and given the enemy's known capabilities, no need for fortified artillery parks was seen. The units still had some ground and far more numerous airborne escorts, the majority of the gunships that were deemed "unsafe" after the enemy's lightning attacks playing watchdog at a presumably safe range. Nobody really thought the "Commanders' sniper rifles" as the rocket carriers were called would come under enemy fire but better safe than sorry.
Each of the M270 MLRS carried twelve rockets of either the M30 or M31 variant. The former bore hundreds of submunitions each, enough that a dozen fired could cover nearly half a square mile and devastate infantry, unarmored vehicles or civilian buildings. The latter could deliver a two hundred pound warhead with fairly high accuracy that could damage even lightly fortified bunkers. Both had a maximum speed in excess of Mach two and all twelve could be fired in under a minute. The M142 HIMARS carried the same rocket types, but "only" six per unit, for a grand total of fourteen hundred and ten guided rockets. In the past couple days of preparation several full reloads worth of ammunition had been brought for each unit, given the numbers of enemies present and the absolute priority of the conflict.
All things said, this represented nearly four years worth of rocket artillery production, all brought to the first ever modern battle on US soil. Where older, lighter artillery had proven ineffective and where aircraft were in serious danger of the enemy's weather manipulation, heavier conventional weapons would have to do. Because if they didn't, authorizations under the Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations were already underway.
xxxx xxxx
The first sign of true homing projectiles brought a small smile to Legate Mot's thin, bloodless lips. At last here was proof he wasn't fighting some total primitives that could be easily crushed underfoot, but a halfway credible opponent. Merely the launch of any one of those missiles of theirs fed more violence into his influence than a hundred of their artillery shells, not because it was that much more powerful but because of the guided, deliberate intent behind them. There was less separation between the weapons and their wielders and though the link was still feeble when it came to personal generation of power, their collective impact on the balance of magical forces was far more significant.
As the missiles closed, the five complete lightning towers under his command powered up. The moment the first missiles entered the towers' range, lighting bolts lanced out in jagged torrents of elemental violence. Each missile struck was annihilated by a destructive power that could level a house or carve a crater five cubits deep into the ground. Five missiles died, then ten, then fifteen, but the Lightning Towers lacked the rate of fire to engage them all. Only forty-five had been intercepted by the time they came within half a league of the towers and his ground forces both.
That became, of course, largely irrelevant the moment his sixty-two chained demons engaged the threat. They weren't demons of course, not more than a foot-long effigy of a dragon was truly a dragon. Whatever apprentice had come up with the name in the depths of history, the appellation had stuck based on its appeal alone; every mage wanted to feel significant and what was more significant than commanding demons? Sometimes Mot wondered whether the inventor of that particular construct had grown into power and prominence to become his current Lord and Master; the theatricality certainly fit. All other times, Mot kept those thoughts in the deepest, darkest depths of his mind; his Lord might listen to criticism but was always quick to stamp out mockery.
The conjured and bound fiends produced their customary homing fireballs and launched. Under ideal circumstances, chained demons could launch a homing fireball in under a second but could maintain only one at a time, and guide it at speeds inversely proportional to its accuracy. When propelled no faster than an arrow in flight the fireball never missed, if launched at the speed of a falling star it could hit a running man three miles away. For those reasons it made an ideal close-range interceptor of any fliers not beyond the power of mortal armies and the incoming missiles were both easier and slower targets than the fireballs' capabilities could manage.
In a storm of fire over an occupied, half ruined city, nine out of every ten incoming rockets were destroyed. The surviving one hundred and forty-two struck their intended targets and entire square miles of streets and lots of rubble were blasted by tens of thousands of submunitions while far more powerful rockets cratered into towers and fortifications of black steel. Thirty-five thousand undead infantry were destroyed, seventeen thousand sustained moderate damage, seven lesser towers were bent out of shape and four barrows had so many craters blasted into their armor they were barely standing upright.
In under a minute, Legate Mot's forces had been dealt what in a mortal army would have been utterly crippling losses. What was more, the locals were already reloading and in minutes another such destructive salvo would arrive, then another and another.
But then Legate Mot finished his dinner, vanished all remains leaving only a pristine plate and spoon for a local girl turned wraith to tidy up, and began to cast.
xxxx xxxx
Between one heartbeat and the next, the force that had once covered three thousand cubic miles of airspace in magical mist grabbed at a cylinder of airspace half a mile wide and four miles tall and twisted. Before anyone could react, the aerial mass within that volume was accelerating as if shot out of a cannon then tied on an unbreakable string, forced to rotate in place. Three seconds later, it had hit twice the airspeed record of any twister ever recorded, the entire funnel moving along faster than most race cars. The enormous tornado was set in motion, then the magic moved on.
In the half a minute till its momentum was spent and the funnel collapsed, the tornado waded through the artillery park it had been aimed at like the fist of an angry god. Winds three times faster than those that had picked ninety-ton train cars off their tracks and smashed them on the hillside lifted any vehicles like toys. Winds still twice as fast as those that had torn thousand-ton metal power relays and shattered brick walls like so much chalk tore every man-made construction in the area off the ground and scattered its pieces for nearly a mile in every direction. The soldiers and engineers caught in the open died instantly, their bodies crushed like kicked eggs. Operators and gunners in heavily armored units were less lucky; some of them even survived for several hours in the mangled ruins of their vehicles.
Every few seconds the massive power of a strategic weather mage moved on, having set in motion another short-lived tornado. The far smaller power requirements of short-lived, localized phenomena allowed Legate Mot to extend his range. He was not his Master to reach out and sow city-razing hurricanes four hundred leagues away, or to tap into the deeper arcane currents of Maveth to shatter mountains with great earthquakes, but for this theater of war, his far lesser power sufficed. Over the course of five minutes, every local military formation of any significance within sixty miles had a tornado dropped on their heads...