Practiced motions, in the stillness of darkness and the deafness of true stealth magic, allow us to enter the human mountain outpost unchallenged. Even with all our skills we still had prepared for months to exploit a critical flaw in their main detection system.
Those dirty humans with all their fancy equipment overly rely on life detectors, now blinder than even ourselves on what was going on on the other side of the continent.
The one major kink in our plan is their other type of detection able to pierce all types of stealth we have without even the smallest of clues. But it couldn’t always be present and watching, especially now that they are ‘forced’ to track thousands of our groups moving across their planet. A few of their smaller outposts are easy pickings if we detect their precise location ahead of time. And this critical flaw in the design almost seems purposeful: Almost.
As well rounded as the humans are, considering they are newcomers, there is that qualification hidden in plain sight: newcomers. The old Archduid spoke the truth when he pleaded for us not to underestimate the enemy.
We pass the last corridor to stand amongst the thousand humans, a good portion of which are sleeping, but we aren’t aiming for their lives. Not even that of their guards. No matter how stealthy we are, if somebody dies, they will instantly know of it. We didn’t manage to subvert such an active system.
Even eliminating a fraction of their numbers simultaneously would require way more than the 30 infiltrators I brought. And we don’t have enough elves with the required skill level. There might not be 10 Elves on the planet left able to replicate this feat.
So, we are going for the least protected equipment. Simple flying vehicles in this ‘depot’ likely meant to replace the sporadic loss near the field of battle.
We keep making good pace through the corridors until all my conscious thoughts narrow. A red light turns on in the device I attached to my belt. Being connected to the enemy’s network I instantly know that it means:
‘We tripped a silent alarm’, blares in my mind.
All caution lies out of the window and we take off running. I stay behind for a moment to put a complex piece of runic working on top of the closest network node and turn on its shield. The automatic sequence starts and plays havoc in their vaunted network. Every local channel is filled with noise and garbled data delaying their defensive efforts. Running to the closest airplane, I shoot at the only inner-world-powered flying machine, which is sheer luck.
That takes out the last of its rocket engines, effectively grounding it.
I would love to steal it as well, but that is just getting greedy. We hadn’t planned for that and there are probably more humans inside than the pair I can see through the doors protecting it.
That doesn’t even account for the security measures we haven’t encountered. Bypassing them would require preparation, let alone the fact we lack space mages to directly access the space pocket because I doubt we can use their method. Still, I keep running at a full sprint, being the last to enter one of the planes even as it already has started to spin its turbines.
Months of planning without even knowing if we would need to pay off.
In seconds, we are taking off almost simultaneously only losing a single plane.
A few scouts patrolling outside the hangar use their very ‘flying bicycles as obstacles aiming for our wings or engines before ejecting, but in another couple seconds, we are beyond their limit of 20 meters altitude just two planes short of the full haul.
As the pair of long range magical turrets with a good firing angle to our precisely chosen path tries to fire, the humans learn of our last surprise. No connection to the turrets.
In another few seconds, we are out of its range.
I assess our 31 flying vehicles finding all the damage is cosmetic.
We managed to get them out from under the human’s noses. Now all we can realistically hope is to draw enough attention we help hide the main effort for a little longer. And when it comes to something as important as a source, no effort is to be spared. The only flying vehicle that could have caught up to us is debilitated. Even if they have the replacement parts on hand, it will take them a while to switch out, but the deeper damage to other structures, such as fuel lines and sensors will probably need a more deft touch. They hadn’t had much occasion to repair their vehicles on the field. They usually rely on redundancy, mana shields and f distance from combat to protect most of their precious flying vehicles. With the shields being down during our attack, the only dangerous flying vehicle within hours of this place became easy pickings.
We fly in a specific direction for another couple of minutes before a pair of our new planes skim the tree canopies and pull our reinforcements. The only real chance for those who were used to flying to get a glimpse of it again.
Teams of druids and wind runners attach themselves with long kinetic lines flinging themselves in the air and entering the airplanes, before spinning their magic allowing the pair of planes to catch up with us in no time.
That’s when the last part of the plan comes together. Kinetic links and careful maneuvering on our part distribute all the magic users with their mana stores between the planes. Then they strengthen those kinetic links formed as short as our pilots can bunch up the planes.
Each airplane enters its designated spot in a carefully calculated triple-decker V formation imitating migratory birds. We get so close, that the planes aren’t just slightly overlapping their wings, which without magic would already play havoc, no, each plane actually gets its body between the overlapping wings of both the planes beside it in an ordinarily impossible maneuver. But we aren’t just relying on technological means. Instead, even as someone who only specializes in a single aspect of magic, the stealth that my class empowers, I feel the majesty of the grand work of magic forming around me.
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The altered wind pathways are carefully guided by magic. Mana is being poured out at too high a rate for us to sustain forever, but while our mana backpacks last, we are going to be all but uncatchable. Our speed starts to climb, not relative to the air around us, but to the ground as a bubble separates us from the outside. A bubble that relies on wind magic of greater proportions than I have ever seen this early during an invasion.
A strange bubble grows around our craft allowing us to break the sound barrier. Slowly we climb to just over Mach 1,7 even though the planes still behave as if we are moving subsonically.
The system may limit what we built ourselves, but that doesn’t mean the natives know know to make the most of their own tools. Too bad, their security is too tight. If we managed to steal a few thousand planes, we would dominate them relatively easily.
As we climb higher and higher in the sky, a second field of magic comes down, this one a low stealth skill meant to be used over large areas. It wouldn’t hold up to close scrutiny, but there is nobody, not even their cursed trees for miles.
=============
Pando’s village commander POV
I watch a recording of the enemy going dark once again on my table’s holographic screen. My office may not have many furnishings, but it has what I need and I play it on a loop serchign of r some clue. Even if the few seeds with enough range could still get the occasional ping, it was climbing higher and higher and would leave their range for good any minute now before a flying vehicle could get close enough that they wouldn’t be able to escape.
But why would you do this? What do you actually want? What is your final objective?
This feels like closer to a distraction rather than the goal. They can’t accomplish anything with so few people and limited fuel. In a couple of hours, we will run them down and then this distraction will be over.
I change the screen to the movements on the ground and after a minute I start spotting a few anomalies in the patterns of enemy movements.
Nothing that would individually make this cycle any different from the dozens that came before, as it seems they like to do. Half of their numbers are on the move. One or two might actually hit a real target while the rest would join after taking a long way around and others would simply head back to the nearest outpost. This is a familiar pattern, but something is different this time, I just can’t put my finger on it. We never know when a certain group is taking something important.
And this is different even from the normal uncertainty.
“Are they…?” a new aide says with his head so bent that before the system, I would have thought he broke his neck, as he tries to make sense of the map.
“What did you see?” My voice booms in the room and I startle him. I almost sense him close up, not accustomed to my forceful approach. With a fraction of a send of a second to pull a breath, I purposefully soften my tone. “Just tell me what crossed your mind, it might give me a fresh perspective.”
Swallowing dry, he speaks up.
“I… I think they converging on these four points.” He says pointing at the map. “It could be one of the smaller ones if they don’t need too many to accomplish their actual goal, but…”
“But… spit it out,” I say in a mild tone.
“It doesn’t FEEL like it.”
“What do you mean FEEL?”
“I mean feel, right here in my gut.” He says patting his gut through the uniform.
“So you are the second coming of Nash?”
“No, I don’t. I wouldn’t dare…”
I let out a belly laugh relieving the hours upon hours of tension as he stands around shuffling his feet. Logically I know this isn’t really all that funny, but the desire fills me and I need to let it out. Like all things, the moment eventually is over and with a fresh mind, I stare back at him.
“Everybody feels that… sometimes, maybe you, your mind, your gut, your instincts are uniquely suited to deciphering their patterns and you listened. Come over here.” I became his over to teach him the controls until he is familiar with them and he started to look through the map. Maybe he will be able to go beyond what I had already seen.
As he moves the screens, I follow his logic chain or rather try to. Some of what he looks for is logical. Enemy concentration and heading. Others require more experience to understand, like terrain. But much of what he is looking at seems random. I can almost sense the puzzle forming in his mind and I try to pull on the thread like he is doing.
“See.” He points and his madness infects me and I DO see. In the chaos of the movements that I analyzed for hours, I SEE.
“Yes. It was fairly obvious they were drawing in this general direction, but they must be coming through this side over here. It all fits together.”
“If the groups didn’t know where they were heading, maybe they wouldn’t have given it away and maybe I’m wrong.”
“Maybe a black hole will pass through Earth just shy of the speed of light and make all this irrelevant, ”I say off handedly, before turning to him. "We work with what we have and we make reasonable inferences. This is a step in the right direction in analyzing the enemy's movement patterns. Send the messages out while I contact the seeds.”
“I… you are right.”
With a narrower area to search, I point the seeds with perception feeds to the four areas the troops seemed to head toward in search of what they actually wanted. If we find it first we will be in a much better position.
Running through the thousands, tens of thousands of square kilometers of the loosely pointed area with a fine tooth comb would take ages and the pair of exclusionary areas make the effort even harder, but if there is a chance that anything interesting we should try.
Over the hours, the seeds make dozens of small discoveries, tiny natural ore veins, gems to be extracted and even new types of plants, all of which will be of profit to us but nothing extraordinary.
I purposefully send people to rest, cycling teams in and out of duty given we don’t know when or even if we will discover what we need before the enemy.
Then the time arrives as their direction grows from a possibility that fits what we knew into all but certainty. One of the locations ends up being a distraction, as the enemy simply disperses back to the nearer encampments. Two others get ready to set up what seems like a temporary camp, one right on the border of a system exclusion zone and the other near a medium natural resource spot. But the last one calls my attention even if it's still unclear. We would probably suffer losses, even in the relatively favorable conditions for those two locations, but I still order plenty of our people to that position.
But my mind is already on the last one, planning an assault on the last one. They get much deeper in the territory than usual. Deep enough that we lose track of them without the extra range that Nash’s name brand perception field could achieve instead of the ‘knockoff’ version that the seeds have.
Long range visual scans only give me a rough idea of what is happening inside. But then a sheer rock wall starts to slide into a perfectly chiseled entrance.
The pit of my stomach drops. Now I’m the one to trust my gut when it tells me:
“We are screwed if we don’t get the enemy out of there.”
I may not know why yet, but the feeling is solid, with weight behind it and I trust the dread.