"Your majesty. We cannot hold the pass. I am sorry, it just...cannot be done."
Wing closed her eyes, and her pain was plain to see as she heard Kana's soft voice.
"What about the fortress of Everwinter ?" She forced herself to ask.
She already knew the answer, of course.
"Without the Clearice pass...." Kanadaj gulped with all of his heads at once. "Without the Clearice pass, there is no way to supply the fortress. It will fall, your majesty. And....and everyone within it will be lost."
Wing covered her eyes, and there was total silence in the council room as she wept. She already knew that of course. She'd known the second the Legion had broken through their defenses and had been reported assaulting Clearice pass. It still hurt to hear it out loud however. Especially from her greatest general and councilor.
Three thousands. That was how many of her subjects she had sent to defend that fortress. That was how many people she had sent to their certain death. The Legion didn't take prisoners, not anymore. Not that they were particularly savage, just because they simply no longer could afford to. Three thousand people that she had ordered to hold that fortress, despite knowing that if the Legion was to break through, they would be doomed...and the worst part was, she'd do it again in a heartbeat. Because it had been the right thing to do. Still was.
Yes, the fortress of Everwinter would fall...but it would take several days. And those precious, precious days would be used by her beaten and battered forces to retreat in good order, and establish a new defensive position further south. Closer to the capital. The Legion could try to overrun them of course, but it would be suicidal. They might have better, heavier equipment, but her penguins were in their natural element. If they wanted to come after them with Everwinter in their back, threatening their supply lines, while her loyal soldiers waged a fighting retreat, peppered with guerilla attacks, she was perfectly willing to let them do so. Maybe then she could finally push them back.
Of course, some things were more likely than others. And by now, after a full 3 years of bitter fighting, the incompetents and idiots had been brutally rooted out of each side's command structure. Oh, that didn't mean the commanders on each side were all tactical geniuses, but at least they were competent, and not prone to the sort of rookie mistakes of peacetime militaries that had lead to the bloodbaths at the outset of the war.
Wing took a deep breath, and opened her eyes. She met Kanadaj's many, many eyes, for her greatest general and councilor was a towering red hydragon, a multi-headed dragon with scales the color of crimson.
"Very well. Where do you plan to put our next fighting position ?"
A barely audible sigh of relief swept the room, and Wing had to restrain a smile. A grim one, but a smile nonetheless. She no longer was the young monarch that had taken her father's throne after a Legion sniper had killed him. She was no longer the empress that wept during councils, and became unresponsive for hours, days on end when the news of more of her people dying for her reached the capital. Still, her councilors remembered...and all of them were feeling the same pressure she was. The pressure of the Legion's unrelenting advance, and their seemingly unending string of conquest.
Oh, they had won against them. Won many times in fact. But they just kept coming. They pulled back their forces, leaving fields of broken robots and androids behind, then a few days later they came back. Sometimes it was with a new tactic, or a new war machine. Sometimes they just came back in greater numbers. But they came back. They always did.
Have to hand it to her. If nothing else, her murderbots are at least tenacious, she thought to herself. Then she shook herself internally. This was no time to think about her.
"We have planned several, but right now we are thinking of creating a temporary defensive line in the town of Icepath, to cover for the establishment of a much heavier one in the choke point between Icepath and Solitarypeak."
Wing poured over the map, and slowly nodded. It made sense. Clearice pass was the northern end of a massive canyon called Moutainrend, which went straight through the otherwise nearly impassable Snowdrift mountain range. Icepath was just a modest town in the middle of the canyon, but Solitarypeak was the regional capital, and held the southern end of the pass, which lead directly into the province of Truesouth...the province where resided the capital of her Empire. Solitarypeak would almost certainly be a better defensive position, but it was also vital to their logistics, and it's industry was too important for the war effort to let the Legion get within artillery range of it.
"3 weeks." She said.
Kanadaj looked up sharply, the movement disconcerting to the uninitiated as his multitude of heads snapped up in unison.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
"Beg your pardon your majesty ?"
She looked him straight in the eyes, and a light reflected in his as he recognized the steel in her gaze.
"I need you to give me 3 weeks. If you hold that long, Lone and his divisions will be available to stabilize the front, or even push them back. But we need to keep them penned up in Mountainrend, or he and his men won't make a difference. Can you do that for me ?"
Kanadaj looked in her eyes for a long second, and nodded.
"I will give you your 3 weeks your majesty. Me and my penguins will hold the legion back."
Then, he raised a massive clawed hand, closed it into a fist, and slammed it against his heart, and Wing returned the salute.
*****
Icepath defensive line, 2 weeks later...
"Hey, sarge ! Over here !"
Sergeant Sorcar, 6th penguin infantry battalion of the Penguin Imperium, lifted his head up quickly, seeing the private waving at him, before dropping back onto the snow as he heard the wizz of a bullet flying past him.
Damned snipers, he thought.
The Legion had managed to somehow get some of their sniper bots into crevasses up in the canyon's walls, and they had made the life of his battalion a living hell for the past few days.
Next time I'm using an APC, he thought to himself as he slowly, carefully crawled through the snow. Sure, only officers needed to be pampered and moved around in armor, sergeants didn't need that kind of nonsense...but it beats the hell out of crawling through the snow for hours on end, and at least their snipers couldn't penetrate the APC's armor...yet.
He frowned. Now that was an unhappy thought. Because so far, the Legion had proven surprisingly adaptable for a giant mass of robots and AIs. Coupled with their tendency to mass produce everything, and having fiendishly effective designers and researchers, and they had handed the Penguin Imperium and it's armies a few serious surprises over the years. Like those damned gyrobombers of theirs.
The mere thought made him stop, and quickly scan the sky, before resuming his progress, shaking his head. This far up south, flying the damned things would be impossible, their hydraulics just froze solid. And thank the Empress for that ! They had been the nightmare of his battalion during the battle of Suresnow, and he had no intention of ever, EVER again being caught in a marching column when these things rumbled through the clouds and dropped a few tons worth of frag bombs on them. Not that they were much better even when in entrenched positions. The damned bots just kept coming, heedless of the amount that got shot down by the rifles, machineguns or the few dedicated anti-air vehicles his battalion still had.
His thoughts stopped as he felt a hand grab his own, and pull him into the trench. He landed with a 'ooof', and got up, wincing slightly.
"Well, hello boys." He said to the grinning soldiers in front of him. Not that they were all male, a good half were female, but getting lost in endless pronouns helped no one. Besides, what about the neuters ? In any case, he knew their smiles were more due to seeing him than his...unseemly entrance.
"Glad to see you sarge." Said the private that had waved to him. Erys if Sorcar's guess was right. Good kid, a bit too enthusiastic for her job -she was an infantry soldier, not an artillerist- but otherwise a solid soldier, and one hell of a marksman. She also sucked at anything resembling protocol. "How was the crawl ?"
Sorcar shook his head.
"Just wonderful. The snow was tasteful, just the right amount of soot mixed in, and there was only a light rainfall of lead."
The soldiers exploded into laughter, and he smiled. It was never good when frontline soldiers were too happy -either something was wrong, or they were about to make some serious mistake-, but it was even worst when their morale was low. And a few jokes were a good, cheap and reliable way of cranking up said morale a bit.
"More seriously." He said, his tone dropping into the 'sergeant' mode. "How are you holding up in here ?"
Erys looked around for a bit, before looking back at Sarcor.
"Pretty bad sir. Not horrible but...not great either. Like you said, constant sniper fire. It's ineffective as all hell in our position, but...they only need to get lucky once sir. We lost Falmeet yesterday." She looked at the ground, bowing her head at the memory of her fallen comrade.
Sarcor bowed his head as well. He hadn't know Falmeet well, but she had been one of the best grenadiers in the battalion.
Once again he weighed withdrawing 1st platoon from the outermost trenches...and once again rejected the idea. 2nd and 3rd platoon were good soldiers, but none of them even came close to the level of experience and expertise that 1st platoon regularly demonstrated. And right now, he needed that experience right where it was, at the tip of the spear, ready to stop any Legion attack dead in it's tracks, or at least buy enough time for a counter attack to stabilize the line. The damned robots would attack soon. He had fought them too many times, he was so sure of it he could almost taste it.
"Alright. I'll send a corpse disposal detail. In the meantime-"
"STAND TO ! STAND TO ! INCOMIN-"
The sentinel watching through the firing slit never had the time to finish their alarm shout, as a 16mm gauss cannon round ripped through the entrenchment, and straight through his head, making it explode like an overripe balloon.
"SHIT !" Yelled Sarcor as he threw himself down, followed almost instantly by the rest of 1st platoon, as a massive storm of gauss rounds swept the top of the trench. There was only one circumstance in which this happened, and Sarcor, quickly grabbed his electronic whistle, nestled it in his beak, and blew as hard as he could through it.
The shrill, mostly superfluous sound ripped through the sound of gunfire, and Sarcor spit out the whistle, before grabbing his communicator.
"Command, command, this is sergeant-major Sarcor, currently at section 3-1 ! Reporting massive suppressive fire from Legion forces ! Requesting reinforcements, over !"
For a second, only static answered him, and he worried that the Legion might have found a way to jam their communication again, then the communicator sparked back to life.
"Roger that S-maj Sarcor. Sit tight, we're sending you everything we have ! I'm rousing the artillery, I'll call you when they're ready to fire. Hold the line, we're on our way, over !"
Sarcor firmly nodded, before answering the communicator as he realized the other penguin couldn't see him.
"Roger that ! We'll do our best sir ! Sarcor, out !"
"Do us proud ! Command, out."
Sarcor let go of the communicator, and looked up at the soldiers around him, smiling grimly.
"Well, better get into position boys. It's about time we earned our princely salary ! Let's go kick some robot ass !" His smile turned positively wolfish at the last sentence.
The soldiers returned his smile with their own hungry version -hungry for battle, for revenge-, and he nodded.
"Alright ! Man your positions !"
As one, they got up, crouching to avoid the gauss rounds still passing overhead, and positioned themselves at the edge of the trench, facing the endless snow, now hidden by smoke, no doubt fired from the Legion's mortars, of the no man's land.
Then, a massive sound ripped through the air. A horn that no one that had fought the Legion could ever forget reverberated in the canyon, and the firing stopped. Then, the clangor of hundreds, thousands of robotic feet and spider legs hitting the frozen, snow covered ground filled the air.
Sarcor took a deep breath...then lifted himself up in a firing position, and began waiting for the incoming robots to clear the smoke.
It looked like the attack he'd smelled was here after all.