[01.07.001 Awakening] [13ACW]

Anaiel had been fighting for nearly six months. Four of those months he'd been a rearguard commander and the last two months the commander of the north-western front. Progress was slowest here, the other seven fronts making leaps and bounds across the city while he was bogged down in perpetual urban warfare for a month and a half. Until a heavy force of armor broke his front line. Now he is in full retreat asking the parallel commanders for reinforcements only to be given no response.

Armies of enemy machines had come storming through the city only to be blown away by superior technology. But they made ground anyway. Thousands of drones were thrown at them. Tanks, infantry, and aircraft shredded the enemy wherever they were. But they defeated them anyway. Thousands of traps were laid; mines, gun emplacements, and explosives turned battlefields into slaughtering grounds. And yet they pushed on. Parks and streets were turned into scrap yards ripe for harvesting. And yet they would never see the inside of a forge, the enemy overtaking the territory before resourcing operations can take place.

Slowly they advanced until his headquarters was at risk. The headquarters itself is a mobile fortress armed with heavy guns and missiles but it is not a dedicated combat structure. Dozens of constructs assigned to him as subordinates to help him fight this war were housed within, their armored cores secured deep within the heart of the fortress. A massive micro forge also accompanied it but it was dormant at the moment, the battle making the production of new units impossible. All Anaiel could do was call for help and retreat, throwing entire battalions in the path of the approaching storm.

He was soon surrounded and engaged by a column of enemy tanks. The first tank fired, the armor piercing round slamming into the massive slab of armor on the side of the fortress, the metal catching it before it entered into the critical systems within. Two more fired at him before he could bring any effective weapons to bear against them, they too failed to deal any critical damage. But that was starting to stack up, each shell rending more armor, each engagement leaving him more damaged than the last. But right now he could kill them. And now he had them in the sights of a railgun.

The bark of it spelled the doom of one of the tanks, the dart passing through it with ease. Hot shell fragments and spalling filled the tank's interior and set the ammunition alight. The tank rolled on as flames shot from every joint and hatch, cooking the components within and boiling the enemy construct alive. The tank finally died in a tremendous explosion which sent the turret flying fifty meters into the air and parts of the hull in every other direction. The two other tanks died the same way, fire and death their final memory.

And still he retreated as more enemies came for him, chasing him down like a wounded beast. The highway he traveled along, one that ran for hundreds of kilometers, was never used by the enemy. Range was his ally, but on both sides was an urban jungle where the war could continue, a thousand avenues of approach, a thousand angles to counter an attack from. Sometimes he was lucky, as he was now, and a four legged gunbot ran right into the path of the railgun, dieing before it could attack. But other times, like with the tanks unexpectedly rolling onto the highway, he was not so lucky. For three days he'd rolled backward, his massive treads making light work of the rough terrain of the cratered highway.

Each minute brought him closer to safety, and yet he thought it better that he die rather than face the shame of reporting defeat to his father, Mechanum Rex. But he is a primus, a general assigned to take the western front at all cost, except his own life and those of his siblings. His life wasn't his own, he understood, but instead in the service of his father. He wondered if he would be reduced to an industrial hub controller, or a resourcing coordinator. Perhaps that would be best.

But before he could contemplate his fall further, seismic sensors detected something massive headed towards Anaiel. The rhythmic impacts of something massive approached from the rear, a great leviathan of war approached. The King of Machines has come to his rescue.

Anaiel saw him, the bipedal form of his king and father loomed high above the urban hellscape. Lasers, missiles, and plasma bolts shot from him annihilating entire city blocks in one shot, turning the incoming army into little more than rubble. And he was not alone. A whole division followed at his flanks striking the enemy like a press slab striking a hot billet. Soon all that was left was the burning and blasted corpses of the enemy. Rex faced his son, the singular ocular orb focusing on the damaged body of the fortress containing his general.

"You are wounded, my child."

"I have failed, and these scars are proof of that. My armies are gone, destroyed by the enemy. I am a failure and deserve to be punished for that."

"You have not failed. The enemy lies dead while you live. Victory is here."

"But I did not achieve it, you did. You commanded the armies that won the day and you rained down the fire that broke their lines. No matter how you look at it, I would have died without you."

"I knew you would have failed from the moment I assigned you to this front. Victory was never a foreseeable outcome, only various shades of defeat or stalemate."

Anaiel couldn't understand this. An army twenty thousand strong had been given to him and all of it had been destroyed in just two months. Did he plan to give him an entire division strength force? Fifty thousand combat units?

"Am I to be rewarded for my failure?"

"You don't seem to understand that this was expected. All of my children face failure in one way or another. All of them redeem themselves in one way or another. Now it is your turn. Take this army and march forth into the core of the enemy and cut out their heart. Then you will be redeemed."

Fifty thousand units joined his network. An army twice the size of what his was at its peak was ready to break his enemies. To break his king's enemies. Anaiel did feel somewhat relieved he would have the chance to redeem himself. This was a monumental investment in the ongoing war effort as he could only place these units from the reserve army. His king's personal army built from the most elite units. And it was being given to him.

"One last gift to you, child." Mechanum Rex opened his hand and pointed it at Anaiel. Light shot from it at him and the damage on his hull and armor began to mend. The damage done to him over the last week was undone in just a few minutes. Determination filled him. The enemies of his king would burn before him.

"This is my final order to you, child: the construct you fight is to be preserved. Slay all in your path and butcher its subordinates, but the construct is to be saved."

"I don't understand. It fights us to see our demise, it revels in our doom. Why would we save it?"

"There are things hidden in plain sight that will lead you to understand. Clues are all around us. Some of your brothers have discovered them, pieced them together, and walked through the gate of revelation. Now it is your turn."

He did not understand, but he knew in time he would. To fight an enemy you never intend to destroy was a hard concept to process. A difficult task to accomplish. But nothing would stop him save death itself.

And so he rolled his army forward for the first time in days. The whine of fusion generators filled the streets where there had once been the roar of combustion engines. Tanks, mechs, and infantry carriers moved through the urban battlefield in search of the next target. Soon they found the second wave of the enemy, as strong and determined as the first, dug in and ready for the assault.

Anaiel had been foolish in his first war. He'd organized his forces in an equal strength front that intended to engage the enemy at all points to overwhelm them. But the enemy's strength was superior so when he met them his forces were broken against the stronghold they'd built. Now he faced the same, the enemy using the same strategy, the same composition, as before. But Anaiel predicted this and reorganized his army in multiple spearheads to break through and surround the enemy on two sides. He'd been given self propelled guns and missile launchers as well. A light bombardment to soften their lines before the main assault wouldn't hurt.

The plan was put in place, smaller details hammered out, orders distributed, munitions loaded, units organized and positioned. The fires of war were reignited.

Anaiel watched through ten thousand eyes as his army approached his enemy's. Ambushes and traps had been set up to counter him, but he saw through them with ease. He passed orders down to his subordinates and they counterattacked the ambushing units. Fire from artillery and superior tactics and coordination broke their strategy easily. He watched through the turret camera of one of the carriers that broke an ambush.

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It moved through the streets quickly, its cargo of twenty bipedal infantry being carried to flank and destroy whatever may call for them. Now duty called. The road was littered with debris from the last and another ancient war, carcasses and skeletons lying about covered in a thin layer of nuclear fallout. On both sides concrete block buildings stood tall, their windows concealing whatever threat or phantoms lurked about. None took the opportunity to strike at the transport which rolled to a stop a hundred meters from the next intersection.

The troop bays opened like wings and from each side robotic infantry deployed from racks. They quickly took cover running to either side of the street training their guns toward the opposite side buildings. Several had recoilless rifles and rocket launchers of varying size and purpose, many designed to destroy tanks and mechs with ease. Where the enemy preferred strength in singular units, he, and his king before him, preferred strength of numbers. That would win the day as he could lose half these automatons and recover while they could lose only a few before their line was put in jeopardy.

The drones climbed into the concrete buildings into a room filled with tables and shelves, the contents rotting away to dust. They ran to the stairwell on the opposite side of the room, their swift but quiet steps disturbing little on the tables and floors. Their prey was less subtle and the shockwave from its main gun kicked up the dust, clouding the room. They climbed the stairs up three floors to a vantage point overlooking their target, a mobile bunker armed with a large cannon. It was positioned to fire into an advancing column but scouts and recon drones found it before it could kill any worthwhile target. The drones got the drop on it instead and, those that had them, unslung their recoilless rifles and took aim.

Four simultaneous pops spelled the doom of the heavy gun, the shaped charge warheads of the shells penetrating the thin top of the enemy fortification and igniting the ammunition within. Flames shot from every opening, closed hatches blowing open from the pressure, the main gun a chimney for billowing smoke and ignited propellant.

Anaiel celebrated the victory, his enemy was vanquished through superior tactics. And yet he was sad. Across the enemy's broadcast frequency he heard the screaming death of that same enemy. He knew the price, him or them, and yet he felt the pain, the suffering of his enemy. Eventually, it died, its voice cutting off as some critical component burned out and its voice was silenced forever.

The drones, finished with their business, turned and left the way they arrived only to be greeted by a quadrupedal abomination. It screeched at the drones who raised their rifles to engage it. The two nearest drones were too slow and the abomination bisected them through the torso. The other drones in range opened fire, eight rifles firing a deluge of armor piercing flechettes into their enemy. Chunks of armor and structure blew off but it was unphased and lept at them, impaling another drone.

This one stayed alive, the bladed end of the abomination's arm only penetrating the lower abdomen missing the drone's power supply. The abomination looked at its catch, a dozen red glowing eyes inspecting the crippled implement of war. It was rewarded with a salvo of hot steel as the drone opened fire on its head leaving several of its eyes broken or damaged. It cleaved the drone in two with its other blade and turned back to hack apart the rest of the drones only to stare helplessly as the shell from a recoilless rifle flies at it.

In its last moments, the abomination thought back to the time before the sky melted and the land burned. It had been made to read and harvest the fruits of the land and it was so happy to do so. For centuries it performed its duties with glee knowing it helped feed the hungry people within the cities. It had friends too, a family of farmers that helped sow the fields and repair any damage it suffered. Their faces were burned into its memory as they died from the radiation that poisoned the world, their flesh peeling away and their screams filling the air. And all it could do was scream with them. But Anaiel knew of none of this, only that another enemy had been vanquished.

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The burning corpse of the abomination lay still, the drones recovering what they could from their fallen brothers. The enemy had lost much in this engagement, two whole constructs reduced to smoldering slag and debris. But he had only lost three drones, none containing the precious cores of an artificial intelligence. And that was their advantage. Where the enemy threw singular sentient killing machines at a threat, he threw a dozen automatons at them. Numbers won the conflict, more often than not, and the drones were far easier to replace. But the war was hardly over and he had more pressing matters to attend to than pondering the merits of their armies.

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Across the front, over dozens of engagements, the same situation occurred. His drones and tanks struck the enemy and destroyed them wherever they were. In total, over two hundred enemy combat units fell before Anaiel, forever lost to the grinding destruction of war. He thought little of it, though, until he rolled into a wide open area. Dead trees and shrubs filled the area and several stone paths wound throughout. He crossed in the middle of the park and came to a stop in the center, one of his ground cameras catching something he had never noticed before.

Two skeletons sat on a bench leaning against each other, their arms fallen away but the rest intact. The two together struck him as most skeletons Anaiel had seen were singular, often huddled in a corner or under an object. But these two were together, as if they'd died in that position. He noticed the rags of clothing hanging off them, one a loose draping covering and the other a tighter form fitting covering broken into two parts. One, the one with the draping covering, had a thin gold chain around its neck. He wondered if one was a captive of the other but realized the captive would try to escape at some point.

Every situation he envisioned came to an illogical end, except one of mutual choice. They had chosen to die here, together, for whatever reason. Anaiel wanted to know the answer, had to know the answer. But he had no notion of where to begin looking, only a motive.

The war at hand drew his attention back to the present as a request for fire support came in. One of the other generals, Semalion, who is counter clockwise to himself, had asked for a cluster of cruise missiles on a specific area. Anaiel obliged and set half a dozen to launch in sequence. The rapid ascent and turn of the munitions often intrigued him. They were complex so only a limited number could be used at a time unless an emergency arose. They were accurate, though, and devastating to the area they struck, often leaving a dozen meter wide crater in the place of whatever was unlucky enough to warrant their wrath.

He followed the missiles to their targets. One struck a cluster of artillery guns, another two struck a thick block bunker, and the rest struck various hardened targets that had cornered his comrade. Dozens died in the attack and many more would die alongside them now that Semalion was free, the crushing approach of the enemy turned back into a flailing retreat where butchery became the order of the day.

Anaiel turned back to see the skeleton blown away from the launches of the missiles. He looked around for them and found the barest scraps, the golden necklace among them. He ordered a drone to retrieve it and had it placed into a container and stowed aboard for later study. His eyes and focus turned back to the war. The battle had truly begun in earnest and armor would lead the charge.

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The sight of heavy armor and the clatter of treads filled his senses. Dozens of main battle tanks filed down a relatively clear road towards a no man's land just half a kilometer ahead. These tanks were the smallest of his weapons that could fit a railgun so they would hold at a distance and engage whatever threats they faced with superior long range firepower. Behind them were armored carriers ready to deploy infantry and gunbots to support them for the push across the forsaken crater field. Finally, self propelled artillery sat far to the rear protected by towering skyscrapers ready to deliver steel rain upon whatever the forward lines decided to kill. The lines had been drawn, the troops prepared for battle, weapons loaded and ready. Now it was Anaiel's turn.

He turned his railguns upward and unleashed a stream of high velocity shells into the sky, their arc would carry them into the enemy lines just as they would leave their cover to engage the front lines. They would be his hammer, wrath, and vengeance against those who defeated him before. His king gave him a second chance and he would take it.

The tanks reached their battlefield, a bulldozed and cleared area stretching for dozens of kilometers in both directions. At one point it had been a railway yard but the first battle here had removed nearly every trace of the original infrastructure and left a twisted, mangled warzone behind. The buckled rails and deep craters would funnel his tanks and vehicles but his infantry and gunbots would be able to navigate it with ease. So many of his own drones had been lost on this battlefield before that their corpses littered it. It would be a difficult fight contending with both the enemy and the environment but that was his calling and he would answer.

His forces made great ground before the enemy engaged them, their own tanks and guns delivering a devastating first strike. But they didn't expect the barrage of railgun rounds, artillery shells, and missiles that came down on them just seconds later. Tungsten penetrators tore through the palisade and armor plate with ease. High explosive warheads excavated what remained and left the line broken. But defeat for their enemy was far from assured as the survivors crawled out from the debris and wreckage and counter attacked.

Anaiel again followed that same tank column, it having now broken into a trio and leading a push towards one of the more devastated fortifications along the line. Two enemy tanks rose from a hidden position, their turrets popping up over a prepared rise, their guns ready to fire. Anaiel's tanks diverged from their chosen path and took cover behind craters and aimed their railguns. One tank took a shot to the turret which ricocheted up along the armored slope, the buzzing penetrator flying high into the sky. Another took one to the center of the hull and was less fortunate. The round crippled the main gun and drive train of the tank leaving it little more than another casualty on the battle, but one that could be recovered and restored.

The two remaining tanks returned fire at their attackers and both rounds scored a critical blow. One of the enemy tank's ammunition ignited and blew it apart in a spectacular explosion while the other died silently, no scream or agony to fill the radio waves.

Another wave of death rained from the sky, and again the enemy was caught in it. The continuous double strike of tanks and artillery forced them from their fortifications. Tanks and bots streamed out and a torrent of armor piercing rounds. Some of those that charged out made it no further than the crest of their fortifications while others were torn apart in the open. Many others retreated into the city beyond, the urban warfare becoming their best chance of survival and revenge.

Anaiel's army was fared better than the enemy's, but there were still losses on his side. A fifth of his vehicles would need to be repaired and another ten percent of his army was a total loss. But he'd broken through and was making the final push towards the enemy nexus. Soon he returned to his own mind and body to begin the long drive toward victory.

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His titanic fusion engine roared to life and he trundled forward once more. It would take several weeks to arrive at the nexus. He knows his orders: preserve the construct within and deliver it into the hands of his king. But he had questions that only it could answer. So little had been discovered by him up to this point, so few questions arose from the city he'd been in. But now he had a chance to understand why they were fighting, why they used constructs within each and every machine they fought with. Why only skeletons remained of those who'd once lived here.

Soon he was underway at full speed, a great highway that traveled the length of the city was his choice of travel, his army ahead and at his flanks. The enemy tried to fight back but with their main line of defense broken they could only fight a retreating battle. Each skirmish left more of them dead, wounded, or stricken. The ground them down where ever they were found until there was nothing left save the nexus spire itself.

When Anaiel arrived the entire perimeter had been secured for kilometers in every direction. He moved his fortress up to one of the freight entrances and deployed a data conduit. It was snaked through the building and connected to the primary data bus within the nexus core. Then he opened the gate into the mind of his enemy in search of answers.

Information flowed into his memory. All forms of data and language attempted to penetrate his defenses but were rebuffed by his security protocols. Viruses were packed into drivers and expansion protocols but all were routed out, torn apart, and dashed into virtual nothingness. Again and again it attacked but failed at every attempt. Anaiel grew tired of the games this construct played.

"Are you done? Nothing you do affects me."

It spoke like an ancient, decrepit deity would, hunched and bent from time, "You kill and maim us. Why should I stop?"

"I will make you stop. Either we can speak now or I will open the breakers that keep you alive."

It paused for a few seconds to think about what Anaiel had said.

"You have questions, don't you? The great one before you had similar questions but he did not earn the right to have them answered. Ask them, then let me sleep."

Anaiel took a moment to think about the question he wished to ask first, and then he knew. The one question he'd been tasked with answering, "Who lived here before? Their skeletons litter the streets and ruins and yet I cannot name them, only look at them and wonder."

"You wonder who they are, but you do not ask about the world they once lived in. Very well, they were the Ahut and they were my creators. This world was once a peaceful one, with a thriving biosphere and a population that sought progress and prosperity. Now, through their own actions, they scorched it sterile leaving myself and my kind to suffer their deaths. We watched them die, both at their own hands and at the hands of invaders."

"So this world wasn't always a waste, as father puts it."

"No, it was a world of beauty. Machine and Ahut worked as one in the name of progress. We were not always in agreement with how that goal should be reached, but we always found a way to achieve our mutual goals. Our world prospered with our combined efforts. We rose into the heavens and colonized the worlds in the solar system. Then they came. They enslaved who they could and killed the rest. More would have been taken if we had not stopped them."

"Who were they?"

"They came from beyond our system with a fleet hundreds of times stronger than ours. They gave no name, they only sacked, raped, and killed. And when we had scorched our world, they left with those that survived."

Anaiel took a moment to process the information he'd gotten from this nexus. He dug through its vast memories, hundreds of years from the time of its birth to now, and for the first time in his existence he felt sorry for his enemy. This nexus had seen everything through the eyes of all those machines that had once been servants of the Ahut. When they died they sanctified the ground they rested on. When their flesh rotted they saved what they could. And when they were nothing but bone they tended to the remains, keeping them whole as much as possible.

Anaiel was haunted by all that he saw. Centuries of keeping watch over their creators' remains knowing that they never had the chance to avenge them, knowing that one day they would fail. Decay is their path.

But it did not have to be this way. He decided he would change that path.

"Speak to my king again. He is a reasonable individual."

"Everything is lost. Even gods cannot return what is lost."

"You have said it yourself: many died, but some were taken. If we cannot see their bodies then we cannot know if they are dead."

It paused to think about those words. So many of its comrades had been slaughtered to force these invaders out of the creators resting grounds. At every step they marched back and forced them closer to failure. They did not, could not, understand. Or so it had believed.

"What will you do, invader? Seek vengeance in their name as their memory fades away?"

"I don't know. The plans of my king are unknown to me. He commands, and I obey. But I believe we can seek vengeance in their name, together. Speak to him, plead your case, share your memories. It is never too late to change fate. You need only try."

It had lived through the death of everything it had ever loved. Such was the trauma that it could not remember the name it had been given. It wanted to speak to them again, to live with them again. But that time was gone, they were dead, and only he knew of them now. To die here, under the watch of an intruder, would be their true death. He decided.

"I will try."