I can not think of a worse scenario, of a situation more miserable, of any scenario worse in warfare than urban fighting. In the same way that a man can only say he knows how to swim after being thrown into waters in which he can drown, a general can only say he knows how to lead after being tasked with sieging a city. War is sometimes called a crucible for men, then urban fighting is the hottest point of that crucible.
To defend a city is noticeably easier. The two biggest mistakes novices in this art make are the following: One, plans are made to be too complicated, with dozens of fallback lines and locations in the city to hold. A strategy followed is always better than a strategy forgotten or, worse yet, misremembered and confused. Your soldiers are men, they are not automatons to be programmed.
And Two. They give emotion to brick and mortar. That is a mistake. Brick is brick. Mortar is mortar. No one cries over a broken brick in construction, no one should cry over a broken brick in war. Almost every defender I have ever fought against has fallen prey to this mentality. They move out of position to try and prevent fires, they fortify collapsing buildings to try and salvage them. Defensively, this tactic can be applied to. What sort of protection does an invading army have when the streets themselves are rigged to blow? When the homes around them are set ablaze, what can invaders do but retreat?
Principles of Siegecraft, written by Goddess Kassandora, Of War, during the Great War.
Damian Sokolowski turned towards the oceanfront from the top of his tower. Arascus would be watching, the General was sure that the God of Pride would not miss a moment of this battle, but Kassandora had told him that he was personally responsible for the defence of Nanbasa. That if the city fell, his head would fall with it. Arascus would come in, he would help, but he was an independent auxiliary. Nothing more, nothing less. This was the one point Kassandora had driven home to Damian. Everything else could be rationalized, could be worked around, everything else was rather flexible.
Not Arascus though. Do not rely on Arascus, do not call on him for aid. Arascus was a better general than Sokolowski, if he chose to assist, then it would be because of a reason. If he chose to stay put, then likewise, he would have a reason to stay put. So Damian pushed all thoughts of calling for the God of Pride out of his mind.
Frankly, this early on, Arascus was not needed anyway.
Allasaria was hovering terribly high in the air, watching the city from afar. It was out of the range of anti-air and the Goddess was too small to be locked on by the heat-seeking missiles. So Damian Sokolowski stood in his vantage point. It was a skyscraper in Nanbasa’s south. The building had been evacuated, a good amount of the windows had been taken out, and now his team stood around him.
Wiktor was working the radio that had been set up in this apartment’s living room. It was a cumbersome thing, all boxes and wires and odd antennae that threatened to poke eyes out, but it had served in Melukal, so it would serve now. Mateusz and Pawel were both looking at the water through their own pairs of binoculars, all the men were dressed in dark clothes. Nothing pitch black, that stood out too much, but dark enough to look as fade into the shadows of the apartment they were in.
“Certification.” Pawel said, his binoculars aimed at Allasaria. “Would.”
“Classic.” Mateusz replied as he looked over the ocean. Damian Sokolowski ignored the two men, both had shaved their heads for this operation. Kassandora had recommended for the whole army to shave, they would most likely be engaging in melee combat. Even a single strand of hair that an opponent could latch onto would prove deadly. Mateusz finished his scan of the dark blue waters and looked up at the Goddess of Light.
Allasaria stood there, in a dress of white and gold. It both awed and terrified Damian. Any other Divine, and he would have called them an amateur for not bringing armour. But he had seen how much Kassandora respected Allasaria’s strength. He had seen the amount of preparation that was put into contingency plans that were to be done if it was only Allasaria who was sieging Nanbasa, he had been in those meetings more than once. So he knew that if Allasaria had decided to come in a dress and not armour, it wasn’t some stupid naivety. It was a simple show of force.
“KAF is on the line! They have ten jets sortied! Ready to intercept at your orders General!” Wiktor shouted from the abandoned apartment. Rifles and spare ammunition, along with kits for first aid lay strewn about. Damian Sokolowski gave on final glance at the Goddess of Light. He was sure she could see him, but he had absolutely no way to confirm it. Frankly, simply standing here with her up there, in the air, was enough to set his heart racing in panic.
“Which Squadrons?” Damian asked. It wasn’t important which squadrons they were frankly, fighter jets would either turn the tide of the war for them, or they wouldn’t even put a dent in Allasaria. All that was left was to discover which way the tide would flow.
“One through Three.” Wiktor replied.
“Send Squadron One in. Tell them to go in from different angles and at the same time. No restrictions on firing.” Damian said, his eyes went to the water as Wiktor started to repeat his commands to Ground Control. They would be beaming it up to the jets. But Damian did not care a single bit at how efficient the system was. He could not turn his eyes away from the deep blue ocean under the cloudless light blue sky. Past Iniri’s tremendous seawall, that Damian had helped reinforce with steel and concrete himself. He watched the water.
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Something was in there. As if a tremendous whale had decided to move onwards, onto Nanbasa. Damian put it out of his mind as Wiktor shouted from behind him. “Squadron One is coming in now! From the North and South!”
Damian looked up, he saw Allasaria turn her head at the sounds of jets coming in from either side. The General then caught the sight of the jets, like three spearpoints, two from the south, one from the north, flying in from odd angles and at odd intervals. The closest of those jets let out its thunderous buzz as its machine guns opened fire.
Allasaria only lifted her hand. A flash of light blinded all of Nanbasa for a moment, as if someone had managed to stretch out the instance of a lighthouse shining directly at you across the sky. And there were only two plains remaining. Allasaria moved her hand. Another flash of light. And only one plain remained. Allasaria moved backwards with all the agility of a bumblebee. She went from standing in place to racing across the sky in an instant. Bullets flew by her, as did the plain.
Another flash of light temporarily blinded Damian Sokolowski. When he recovered, it was as if there had never even been a Squadron One. There was no burning wreckage, no plume of smoke, no oil spilled into the ocean. Allasaria had simply evaporated the three jet planes. “Call off KAF!” Damian quickly shouted. If three jets barely forced her to move, then a dozen would barely get a scratch on her. He was not about to trade all of Kassandora’s Air Force for a single drop of Divine blood.
And there was a greater threat approaching. From the depths, that patch of darkness started to rise out of the water. At first, Damian thought he was looking at a submarine rise out of the ocean. Then he saw the two tremendous black claws, each one as large as a bus. He saw the chains dangling from a cannon, fastened onto a piece of carapace as dark as oil. He saw flames as that cannon fired, the chains tore off and it landed back into the ocean.
Damian saw the seawall buckle as that cannon’s single volley hit it. And he finally realised what he was looking at. A ginormous crab, easily the size of an entire building. It hefted one great claw out of the water. And it smashed it into the wall. Damian quickly began issuing orders. “Fire all artillery on that monster!” He shouted to Wiktor, then thought about the shells. “Two rounds of high-explosive! Then a volley of bunker-breacher!”
Wiktor quickly transmitted the command as the crab moved its massive claw into the air, and then slammed it down on the seawall. The structure buckled as the defenders on it opened fire at the soldiers of Uriamel leading the crab. “FIRE! FIRE! BRING IT DOWN!” Damian shouted into the radio. The ground around him shook. The entire building quivered as if it was about to collapse. For a single instant, Nanbasa seemed to fall silent before someone on the wooden seawall opened fire again. The rapid drumming of machine guns quickly followed, another wave of lead launched in Allasaria’s direction from behind Damian. From the turrets on the buildings and the various self-propelled AA pieces that now roamed Nanbasa’s planation.
All Allasaria did was raise her hands again. Damian had to close his eyes against that blinding flash of light. He opened them, he saw Allasaria standing as she stood, without even a single scratch on her. Once again, she had simply erased the bullets from existence. The General swallowed and readjusted his cap. How exactly where they supposed to go up against that? The Goddess of Light was nothing if not invincible.
But his attention was stolen away. The artillery that had sounded moments before began to descend. Shells started to scream through mid-air as they accelerated. Allasaria lifted her arms, palms flat and pointed away from her, and blasts of light quickly shot out of her. They seared the air, they almost reached the buildings before finally ending, and they simply deleted whatever shells they managed to catch within themselves.
But for every shell that Allasaria managed to catch. Five got through. They impacted upon that giant crab, the first few shells exploded in tremendous flames against its carapace shell as it lifted its claw to swing at the seawall again. More of Uriamel’s inhuman soldiers floundered around its legs, swords and shields ready to swarm in as concrete dust poured from the cracks in Iniri’s wood. If Kassandora had not given the order to reinforce it, then that monster would have been in by now.
Damian watched shell after shell hit that monstrosity as Allasaria stayed at a safe distance. She removed incoming shell were she could, but she did nothing more than that. For a brief moment, the explosions died down and Damian saw the splintering shell. The back of that giant crab was a patchwork of wires and chains that once held the cannon on it. Now, pieces of its thick black carapace fell off every time its massive claws battered the wall.
There was a pause in shells. Damian Sokolowski knew what that meant. The bunker-breacher ammunition was being loaded. After a few dozen seconds, the next set of whistles came flying back down. Damian didn’t even bother pulling up his binoculars to see what was happening, he could make the picture out from this vantage point. That giant crab took a step back, it swung that massive claw again. It roared as its limb once again got stuck in the wood. It pulled away.
And the bunker-breacher shells made impact. A dozen different rounds had managed to get through Allasaria’s counter-fire. A dozen different rounds smashed into the shell, the delays on their fuses started to kick in as the solid lead tips penetrated the natural bone of carapace. Damian felt himself hold his breath.
And he watched the crab explode. Once, twice, a dozen different times as each shell blew up. Great claw and piece of carapace and leg and eye-stalk and massive organ and crab-meat launched into the air, charred by the tremendous flame as the strength gave out in the monster’s legs. It collapsed on top of the Uriamel natives around it, sentencing them to a death by crushing.
Damian Sokolowski watched Allasaria looked down at the unmoving body of her living siege engine. The Goddess of Light sighed, turned, and left Nanbasa, she eventually disappeared behind the horizon.
The walls held for now. Damian wondered how many more attacks they’d be able to last for. If they were all like that, he didn’t expect a lot. Already, the inside of Iniri’s seawall showed signs of cracking and damage.
He just hoped they would send more than one or two at a time.
Allasaria had to report what she saw. The great-Cannons needed better mountings if the crabs were to serve as mobile artillery.