“No, you ignoramus, don’t secure it like that! The damn thing will fall on you,” Sergeant Gilbo snapped at a young recruit. He pushed the recruit aside, took the chains and locks in his hands, and secured the crate with three locks. Then he pushed the button, and an automatic loader moved the crate to its position.
“See? This is how it is done. Watch and learn, or the damn thing will fall and squash you in the middle of travel,” the sergeant grumbled.
“Sorry, sir. But if any of the crates fall because of me, I will catch the…” the recruit began.
“You will do no such thing!” the sergeant shouted at the top of his lungs, lifting his knuckles from the ground to point a finger at the fool. The rest of his logistics team worked around the cramped space of the crawler, trying not to ignite their superior’s ire any further. “Understand this, dolt. Believe it or not, but I was a young too. I too thought I could catch falling crates... until I saw one of them splash one of my comrades!” Gilbo calmed himself. “The times when the Reclamation Army was short of supplies are over. Supplies can be replaced really easily these days! What, then, can’t be replaced?”
“The time we lose ordering a new batch when we lose supplies in a field?” the recruit guessed.
Damn smartass. The Orais thought in annoyance. The soldier had a point, but…
“Idiot! You’re the one who can’t be replaced easily,” he roared in his face, showing his trimmed fangs. “Why do you think we have had so much shit with this invasion? It is because you are all still green. But I admit this much. With each passing day, you lot are working a bit faster. Now try to use this head of yours for once and answer me. If you die or get maimed, will your replacement work at the same pace as you?”
“Of course not, sir; the new soldier will spend the day attempting to navigate the storage bays and learn all the ins and outs, sir,” the recruit replied, finishing taking some supplies out of one crate and securing the rest.
“Glad to see you finally understood something, daft head. Always, always stick to the safety regulations, and do not even try to catch any of the things here unless you have an active power armor on. And even then, stand aside!” Gilbo grumbled and moved away, using his own knuckles to help him cross the storage faster.
He resented the sheer chaos around him. His former crew was being promoted and tossed all over the front in the hopes that they would use their skills and experience to expedite the training of new recruits. The First Army had always been a fast, hard-hitting army. Even though supplies were no longer scarce, all the skilled personnel were spread thin; entire crews of tanks and other military vehicles were taken apart and their members shuffled off to other teams, teams filled with new green recruits who were lucky to have at least one veteran among them.
This caused chaos, and Gilbo hated chaos. Some thought his hatred of chaos was strange, since the Orais tribes were a prime example of natural chaos, with the only way to rise in rank being to betray or defeat those above you. But over the years, more and more Orais left their tribes to live in the cities. Those who were tired of the dangerous life in the tribes, those who wanted to pursue other careers—all those were welcome in the state’s Core Lands and at their borders. Outsider himself gave orders to set up special education programs for them. The champion had a soft spot for the Orais, for they were the first he forced to bend the knee to the state.
Gilbo was one of many who enlisted and ended up serving in the army as part of many logistical teams. To the surprise of many Normies, the Sergeant was never involved in actual combat and, to his knowledge, never killed anyone or passed the Orais’ traditional challenge, the right to own ranged weapons. New breeds like Orais were considered to be violent and warlike people. But, as Gilbo learned, times often change, and people change as well. Still, he would like to have his older crew back. These new ones were making him sick with worry over their safety.
He and his current crew were in one of sixteen large crawlers, all-terrain transports that could serve as mobile repair and supply centers in times of war. These massive machines moved on massive caterpillar tracks the size of a city block, and their thick armor was strong enough to withstand even plasma fire with little difficulty. Even disruptor weapons would take minutes to chew through the thick diamodite plates of these vehicles. Their tracks pulverized entire sections of the damned forest in their path, and the crawlers’ weight flattened hills and mounds, leaving a long trail of destruction for the rest of the army group to follow.
Each crawler could store up to fifty tanks for repair. Currently, inside this crawler, there are three. One tank’s armor was damaged by the native’s energy lances. A bolt of lightning pierced the rear armor, killing two of the four crew members because they were too inexperienced to use their anti-personnel weapons in time. This would never have happened with an experienced crew, and the tank commander had already written a letter of resignation to the command, taking full responsibility for failing to keep his soldiers safe and properly trained. He was ordered to remain at his post, and new recruits joined his crew. And the team of another tank got captured all together after a ground itself had opened beneath the battle machine.
They got exchanged for three knights and twenty commoners, but the officer in charge had reported that the locals had used some sort of drug to make him talk about His Excellency’s location. Gilbo was almost sad that Outsider was not present on the field. The last fools who had tried to assassinate him were beaten in a rather spectacular fashion.
The same situation repeated itself everywhere. City dwellers reinforced the First Army, instead of steely-eyed former Regulators, Soultakers, or Bentos from the Ravaged Lands who chose to serve in the Third Army to build up their unstable region. Many of these men and women were hardened veterans who gave the state a bloody nose during the King’s Doom War, and it was a shame that they had refused to leave their scorched wastelands.
At least the newer crawlers were more accommodating to their crews. Years ago, his old lady was a creaking thing that often shutting down entire compartments due to malfunctions and garbage codes in her operating system. It was to be expected; the new modules and weapons were grafted onto the machines that were never meant to carry them. Power spikes could burn a soldier’s hand. A sudden mistake could lead to a flood. The old lady was a temperamental hag who demanded respect and ruined lives for daring to take her favor for granted.
Not so much now. Rebuilt almost from the ground up, she faced the new life in all its glory. Her corridors were brightly lit, the medical compartments no longer resembled slaughterhouses, and the cybernetic compartments were separated from the treatment wings. A series of automated tunnels along her massive body allowed for easier logistics; soldiers no longer had to rush antibiotics and painkillers from the cold storage to the medics. They even had an actual laboratory within the Lady’s bowels, a place to research local diseases and synthesize cures for poisons. And the storages and hangars changed too, becoming more spacious and utilitarian, with craning mechanical arms hanging from the walls, ready to assist. The only reason accidental deaths increased at all was...
Gilbo saw that the recruit put his hands too close to the charger, a small machine that recharged energy cells for power armor. These cells were a fresh innovation, used previously only in heavy vehicles and power armors meant for elite forces, such as noble and vain Ice Fangs or brutishly cunning Orais. Recent technological breakthroughs had made them cheap enough to be used by regulars and industrial workers alike, eliminating the need to carry an entire power pack to recharge.
“Put on your gloves, dolt!” the Orais snapped at the young man, snatching the cells from his hands. “Safety protocols, safety protocols first! If the energy even touches your skin, you are toast. Look at me and learn; this is how it is done.” He put on his special gloves, recharged a few cells, and allowed the recruit to continue, satisfied that the young man was taking the job seriously.
“Sorry, sir,” the recruit said, using protective gloves this time.
“City-dwellers.” Gilbo pitched the bridge of his nose. “Listen, you want to live, and you have a right to that. And it just so happens that our desires coincide on that front. How about you make my job easier and ask should you forget anything about the job before you murder yourself!” He exhaled. “If only His Excellency knew of our mess…”
“I’m sure Outsider is aware of your difficulties, Sergeant...” The boy stopped, looking into Gilbo’s gaping maw more in surprise than fear.
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“Grand Commander Outsider, soldier,” the sergeant hissed, taking the boy’s shoulders in an iron grasp and finding impressive muscles beneath the thin appearance. “Show some respect for the state’s greatest hero. He had saved my people. He is one of the reasons we live in a civilized society and not bashing each other’s heads over scrap.”
“My apologies, sir.” The soldier bowed his head. “You… you aren’t going to bite me?”
“What, am I a wild one or a wolfkin? You won’t get away this easily.” Gilbo pushed him to the workstation, ashamed of his outburst. Damned instincts! He sometimes refused to believe that other races do not have an urge to bite one another in an argument or during a passionate mating. “Ten shifts of cleaning toilets should teach you to watch your mouth. Back to work, soldier!”
This pale-skinned city-dweller was transferred to their team just a few hours ago. A soldier who served before him was transferred to another crawler. So far, the sergeant was certain that this greenblood was poorly trained. He wanted to call the newcomer an idiot, but this dangerously took control of the situation out of his hands. If you call your soldiers idiots, you admit you can’t whip them into shape. While Gilbo often verbally berated his crew, he never gave up on anyone of them, and so far, he always managed to make proper workers out of them. Maybe not perfect ones, but he was not the best himself. He just needs to keep an eye on the recruit and make sure he won’t kill himse….
“Put the energy cell back!” He roared when he saw how the recruit trying to install it into the power armor hanging from a harness, forgetting to remove the previous cell from the slot.
Gilbo began to make his way to the recruit when the crawler rapidly stopped, causing several people to fall. The sudden stop shifted several crates, causing them to collapse on the floor, and the workers scattered in all directions, preserving their own lives. The most experienced of them stopped to pull eager greenhorns out of harm’s way. Gilbo swore; those bastards at the helm were supposed to signal before stopping; the crawlers were meant for gradual slowing in order to stop safely and for an instant one.
Crawlers were moving along with the army group “Spear Head,” whose goal was to crush any enemy resistance and encircle the enemy capital. The problem was that due to of the accursed winter, roads were filled with mud and water, making it hellish for the army to move. What should have taken a day now took over a week. Not only did they have to clear forests and greenery out of the way, but they also had to fight the ground itself. Such an advance was maddening, and often the army group stopped because some of the scout vehicles got stuck.
But never before had a stop been so sudden.
“Status report!” Gilbo roared, “Make sure that everything flammable is still properly locked! Anybody hurt?”
“A minor scratch, sir!” shouted one of the soldiers, helping the technicians working on a tank. “Broke my finger because of a sudden stop, but I can still…”
“No buts! Off to the medbay with you, and don’t show your face until all your fingers are working again…”
“We have an injured here!” A technician yelled. “Call the paramedics!”
Gilbo leaped to the source of the scream, evading several people in his way with unnatural agility. His fingers, each as thick as a Normie’s wrist, navigated his body mid-flight with a single touch of the floor and held him with ease in the air. A soldier whose job it was to pick up and deliver repaired armor in and out of the field had her leg crushed by the crate. She gritted her teeth in pain, and the Orais could see a pool of blood under the crate.
A heap of other crates was also on top of the fallen crate, pinning it down and making it impossible to pull the soldier’s leg out from under it without the whole thing collapsing on her. Several engineers and a few soldiers tried to lift the crates, but they were too heavy, and the sergeant saw the woman’s leg getting flatter by the second, the immense weight crushing her bone to dust.
“Enough of this stupidity!” Gilbo snapped at the helpers. “What’s in the crates?”
“Energy cells, sir!”
“Well, no cutting up the crates, then. Put on the armors, boys and girls, and lift the damn things safe and sound! I want the injured in the medbay within three minutes.” Gilbo commanded, cursing the fact that Thug Master Tegrin had already received his shipment of power armors. Otherwise, he alone would be sufficient for the task. But at the moment, there was no armor that fit his body.
“Sorry, sir.” The injured soldier said, “Looks like my war is over.”
“Nonsense!” The Orais tore off his belt and used it as a tourniquet. “They will just hack away your leg and graft you a new one. We have plenty of corpses to choose from; you’ll be back in action in a few days.”
“I don’t want the leg of a dead person,” the soldier said, half losing her conscience because of pain. “When my pa lost his arm, the doctors gave him the wrong one!”
“Was it white or something?” Gilbo wiped the sweat from her dark forehead. The Normies often acted overly dramatically than they should when overworked doctors would grant them a limb of a different color.
“He had lost his right arm! Those cusack-herders had sewn on a woman’s left arm! Took him years to adjust to the double left hands.” Her pained eyes turned to him. “I am telling you, sir, our doctors are all drunks; that’s why they are always out of medical alcohol.”
“That’s not how it…”
“Don’t let them use a dead man’s limb on me!”
“Not a problem; you’ll get a limb made out of steel then. You will get a new leg, and you will love it,” the sergeant responded and turned to the engineers. “What is taking so long? Activate the working power armors and remove the crates already! And someone find the reason why we stopped in the first place!”
The city-dweller recruit stepped forward, moving toward the wounded soldier. He approached the crates, looked at them, and lowered himself as if to lift them.
“You again! Stop wasting your time; you can’t lift this thing. Go and help the…” The Orais started speaking.
“Help. As you command, sir,” the recruit said in a strange voice. In the next moment, something strange happened. The boy’s fingers slid under the crate, crumpling the metal. Seemingly without effort, the recruit began to lift the huge pile of metal crates. The sergeant cursed, witnessing how the crates on top of the pile started slipping, moving dangerously close to falling on the wounded. He prepared to drag the wounded away, even if it meant tearing off her squashed leg. Orais were stronger and faster than humans. He should be able to…
“Stop, Sergeant,” the recruit ordered in a cold voice, and Gilbo froze. He felt as if someone had wrapped a tight net over every inch of his body, making every breath a struggle. The sergeant saw the falling crate; he desperately wanted to move, but he couldn’t move even a muscle. The crate fell, but just before it could hit the wounded, a strange, sickly light appeared in the air. Two ghostly hands grabbed the crate and moved it away with care. As he stepped away, the recruit moved a pile of crates with apparent ease, leaving footprints on the floor with the sheer weight that he carried in his hands. The recruit set the crates aside as the medical team finally entered the hangar to take the wounded to the infirmary. Gilbo understood that he was finally free to move.
“You should’ve told me you have some weird powers. We could’ve put you to better use,” the Orais said to the recruit. Not all new breeds who had powers wanted to serve on the front lines. Many worked in the rear or in civilian jobs. But Gilbo promised himself that he would rip a new arsehole in whoever sent him this recruit and not warn him about the fact that the newcomer had a power. You don’t pull such jokes. “But never use your power against me again. I will make sure that you get rewarded for your help, but add three more days to your cleaning duty for assaulting an officer.” Gilbo’s way of life demands that both good and bad deeds be rewarded and punished accordingly. He’ll buy the boy a drink later. “Now, can anyone tell me why the Abyss did we suffer a sudden stop? Is there an engine failure?”
“No. There are no problems with the engine,” the recruit said before anyone could answer.
The Orais turned to him and saw that instead of normal green eyes; the recruit had pitch black eyes. Darkness flowed out of the recruit’s eyes and covered his body from head to toe. Arms and legs twisted at unnatural angles, and loud cracks filled the hangar as the man’s bones began to break and reform. The darkness enveloped the recruit like water, creating a whirlwind of unnatural black around him. A tornado of black void rose around the person, covering him whole and reaching to the ceiling; its swirling was accompanied by the sound of broken bones and tearing flesh. Two glowing dots appeared at the top of the tornado, looking directly at the Orais. These eyes, two orbs of milky white light, caused Gilbo to shiver in unnatural fear; everything in him screamed the need to run. He forced himself to stand still as the tornado calmed down, taking the shape of a cloaked figure, the cowl hiding the head, yet the glow from the eyes revealed part of a blackened, elongated skull, covered by a thin layer of chitin. An armored hand rose from the dark cloak, and the newcomer looked at his armored gauntlet of the darkest blue. The fingers moved, as if the person were testing something. The light dimmed.
“It’s an attack, Sergeant,” Outsider said, and Gilbo felt the fur on his head beginning to turn white.
Outsider had a calm, assuring voice. Rarely did he feel the need to raise his tone. The champion of the Dynast towered over the Orais. Outsider had an impressive stature, but this didn’t scare the sergeant. No, there was something else, as if simply being near Outsider caused you to feel dread and caused your body to panic. It was as if life itself was sucked out of people, going into these weird, calm eyes of the master of the First Army. Outsider noticed a change in the Orais’ fur as well as the horrible silence in the hangar. Fingers snapped and something changed. No longer Gilbo felt a pull toward Outsider’s eyes, and an easy breath left his lips, along with a surge of energy moving through his veins.
“The Duke has taken our bait.” The champion’s blackened lips barely moved, but everyone in the hangar heard him. “Carry on your duties, soldiers of the Dynast. I have prey to hunt.” The being turned around and, with perfect grace, effortlessly slipped effortlessly through the exit too small for him. A moment later, sirens wailed, loudly announcing an imminent attack.