By all accounts, the day should have been a pleasant one. The sun was shining, the clouds in the sky were faint wisps of water vapor, the citizens were industrious, and the city was alight with the noises of a very active population. For the guardsmen and guardswomen along the tall walls of the once-prosperous Station-fortress Redclyff, the day had gone from bad to worse.
Outside the south-facing thick stone and earthen walls lay a vast field of trenches, railways, and artillery pits made by their decades-old enemy from the Kingdom of Blackstone. Outside the north-facing walls lay the Wastes of the Northlands, which stretched from the equator of the world all the way to the northern polar continent.They were named such due to the fact that after the War of the Titan Engines so many millennia ago, life was incredibly hard for anyone living there. The remaining peoples had culturally devolved into roaming Raider-Nomads who would do anything for the right price.
The Raiders, as they were collectively known, were split up into many many different “tribes”, each typically consisting of a single train, be it a simple locomotive or a captured Engine. A Great Fleet of the Raiders consisted of between ten and one hundred different tribes all falling under the umbrella of a single leader, usually whoever had the most armored and up-armed Engine. None had yet managed to capture one of the dozens of still-wandering Titan Engines that haunted the northern railways, though thousands had tried over the millennia.
At this moment in time, one of the Great Fleets lay to the north of Redclyff, their artillery cars from ancient salvaged Titan wrecks forming an intermittent barrage, only stopping if one of their cannons blew up or they temporarily ran out of shells. The locomotive-driven trains, smaller cousins of the mighty Engines that would not look out of place back on Earth, were also sporadically armed with long and short range artillery, doing their damndest to pulverize Redclyff’s central northern gate.
There were a total of four gates into the Station-fortress, three in the south, and only the one in the north. The two outer gates led to a long loop throughout the Station-fortress, allowing any visiting Engine or locomotive the ability to do a massive u-turn. The two central gates led strictly to one another, allowing passage through the Station-fortress for the very infrequent Reclamation Crusades, and in the very center of these tracks was where the Engine Gate lay.
Within the walled city, which lay in a large valley between two mountain ranges that would put the word enormous to shame, the people were lively in support of their defenders. The Station-fortress was ten miles long, and twice that in width. The first mile inside the walls on either end was a war-torn ruin, filled with the shelled out craters of buildings, prepared defensive positions, and where a vast series of interconnected trenches had been dug by the defenders to protect against the now infrequent shells that landed within the walls. Said walls were based upon the old star-fortress design, and were half of a mile thick at their narrowest point, with upwards of a mile thick at the various triangle-shaped bastions.
The rest of the inhabited fortress was entirely dedicated to making sure the defenders had enough ammunition for their weapons, as well as awaiting the day the Engine Gate at the heart of the city allowed through new Conductors and their Engines this cycle. Every Fortress-station had one, as did many of the capital cities of the various kingdoms, empires, and even a few unclaimed ones in the wilderness. Not every Engine Gate would activate each Cycle, however there was a key indicator that a Gate would have a Conductor coming through.
Each Engine Gate had a grand array of runes along their structure that would light up from the very top to the base over the course of a decade if it was selected to be a Conductor’s entryway into the world of Gaia. As Conductors entered the world, the runes would dim in the same order that they lit up.
Redclyff had at first been jubilant, for their Station had not been host to a Conductor in over fifty Cycles. It was for this exact reason that the King of Blackstone had declared war upon Redclyff, as owning such an uncommon structure would guarantee that the Conductor, or Conductors, that came through might be influenced far more easily to assisting the nation they found themselves in. Or the quick replacement of the Conductor in question, if they were uncooperative.
“Gate’s down to the last few runes,” said Guardsman Raleigh as he slid into cover against the crenellations over the central southern gate with a thud. One of the few remaining wall cannons nearby thundered as it fired at the enemy.
His companion grunted, fired a shot with their bolt-action rifle, and quickly ducked into cover. “Think I finally got that sniper. Between that tree stump and the dead loco.”
Raleigh snuck a peek around the corner through his scope. “Confirmed kill, looks like we’ll be good for at least a few minutes.” He aimed and fired a shot himself, taking the hat off one of the Blackstone officers. “Damn. You’d think that after these last three years of the siege, they’d learn not to wear such colorful hats. Makes ‘em easy targets.”
“They’ve got enchantments that draw ranged attacks to their hats,” his partner replied with a shrug. “Gotta double-tap ‘em if you want to get rid of them.”
“Easy for you to say, Rob,” Raleigh chuckled. “Still, you’d’ve thunk that they would have given up by now, they’ve had three years to breach our walls and all they’ve done is easily repairable.”
Rob did not reply as he moved several crenellations over and aimed down his sights. He fired two shots within a second of one another, then he ducked back down and reloaded his rifle. He smirked at his squadmate, who just rolled his eyes in response.
Suddenly, a man appeared between the two, also skidding against the wall with his weapon ready. “Righto lads, how’s the war going?”
Raleigh and Rob both saluted with a fist over their hearts.
“So far so good, My Prince,” Rob stated. “Confirmed one more enemy sniper, one of their captains, and one hat.”
The newcomer chuckled. “Good lads, and please, remember that when in uniform, it’s Colonel, not Prince. Now, it’d be a right spiffing good thing if we-”
The nearby cannon detonated as an enemy shell hit it, throwing the trio to the floor as the blast wave hit them. Raleigh found himself thrown into the small rail-trench that helped feed the wall’s cannons with ammunition, move troops between sections, and cart out the wounded. At this moment, he found himself thankful that the rails he found himself on were empty, as the other two rail lines had small trains going to and from other sections of the wall. There was a small commotion near the now-destroyed cannon, and it took him a moment to see what it was.
An ammunition train had become derailed from the explosion, and he saw several leftover shells teetering on the edge of the carts. One of the large shells teetered precariously on the edge of a cart, and it started ever so slowly falling tip-first. Raleigh scooted backwards as fast as he could as the shell fell.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
=====================================================================
“Move! Move! Move!” Shouted Sergeant Mackey to his soldiers atop the northwestern bastion that flanked the only gate in the wall as he spotted the newest insanity from the Raider-Nomads of the Jetstream Fleet.
“INCOMING!” Shouted another man, closer to the gate than Mackey and his platoon were, as a horrendous shrieking whistle announced a gigantic mass of metal and steam barreling towards the gate. Seconds later, a tremendous crash was both heard, and felt, as a gigantic ram hit the gate.
The gate was five feet thick of solid steel, concrete, and enough giant rivets to outfit a World War One tank division twelve times over.
The incoming ram, however, was made with the remains of eight captured Engines, enough metal to make a half of a Bagger 288, and enough explosives to put the Blitz to shame.
In a tale as old as time, the immovable object and the irresistible force met once more. In this case, the irresistible force was crewed by those who were both insane, and hopped up to the eyeballs on psychoactive substances.
The immovable object did its best to live up to that moniker.
The gate managed to hold for all of two seconds before the ram’s explosive payload went off, turning both the ram and the gate into the world’s largest claymore mine. The debris from the explosion scattered far and wide, some chunks making it halfway to the other side of the Station-fortress, and clearing out everything in an arc behind the gate a mile deep. The hole created in the northern wall ate into the two bastions on either side of the former gate, creating a new mountain of rubble that streamed down into the crater that had been formed after the explosives did their work. One particularly large chunk managed to land just one hundred feet inside the walls, landing upon the rails.
Rubble cascaded down all around the explosion site from above, impacting on both sides of the breached wall. One large chunk even landed upon one of the smaller locomotives the Jetstream Fleet favored, rupturing the steam boiler and causing a sympathetic explosion that took it and its attendant artillery cars out. The two bastions had had the unintended side effect of channeling some of the explosive firepower backward, turning the area behind the ram into a charnel house.
Oddly enough, the Engine Rails that the ram had ridden on were just fine, if a little blackened with soot. They were not even dipping into the now significant crater that used to be the north gate, though any sane Conductor would not want to test physics too far. The rails that allowed normal locomotives to pass through, however, were completely shattered and unusable for a half mile in either direction.
Sergeant Mackey found himself thrown through the air and into one of the empty pits that housed a long-destroyed wall cannon, roughly halfway up the bastion from the gate. He found himself not alone, as half of his surviving platoon was in there with him, some having been thrown in by the blast and others having already taken cover within. He heaved an internal sigh of relief as he spotted his platoon’s healers alive and already working to heal his men.
His relief was short-lived, as he realized that he could not hear a thing.
{Corporal Jezebel, if you’ve got a moment,} he signed with his hands at one of the healers. Sign language was something that every soldier of the Station-fortress was taught for moments just like this, or when stealth was imperative. Jezebel saw his signs, nodded, and continued healing some of the more seriously injured.
Mackey thought nothing of it, as the healers could tell at a glance thanks to their System-given skills allowing them to triage at a glance. He would have been worried if she had dropped everything and ran over to him. In the meantime, he looked around and noted that his platoon had somehow acquired a group of ten Ogkyn, descendents of humans and ogres or so people knew. All he cared about was that they were all still in uniform, and that the gentle giants were looking around confused.
He stood up, and promptly found himself grunting as he fell on his fluffy tail as his left leg gave out under his weight. He frowned and started thinking on what to do now that the gate was a giant crater. As he was contemplating this, Jezebel walked over.
{This may sting a little,} she signed at him. Green energy grew in her right hand, and when it reached a certain point, she slapped him upside the head. He stumbled forward from the force of the blow, then stood up while rubbing the back of his head.
“Gah!” Mackey heard himself exclaim. “Remind me why you have to slap me upside the head when you heal me?”
“Because a sharp impact with a slap of healing energy tends to fix all sorts of head trauma for those in command,” she replied matter-of-factly. She gave him a once-over then stated; “You’re good.” Without another word, she turned and started helping the next person in the pit.
“Ramirez, Bobby, Stephen, up on the wall,” Mackey barked at three of the healed soldiers. The trio responded with a fist-to-chest salute, keeping low to peer over the ruined crenelations, ears up and twitching at the slightest sounds down in the area with the rails. Satisfied his sharpshooters were occupied, he turned and barked orders to the rest of his men to cover the approach to the breach.
He watched with approval as his last heavy weapons team set up their water-cooled machine gun while several other soldiers gathered rubble to form an impromptu barricade along the edge of the rubble that led down into the man-made valley below. Smaller chunks of concrete debris were carefully stuffed into some of the larger cracks by idle soldiers
He had one surviving combat engineer left in his platoon, and Mackey thanked his stars that the man’s mana was not tapped out yet as he watched the engineer turn the debris-filled cracks into solid flooring via magic.
He walked over to the Ogkyn and stared up at the one who was in charge of their squad, denoted by the big gold star on the big man’s chest. Mackey was tall for a Wulfkin, standing a nice six foot four, but the Ogkyn still dwarfed him by at least two feet, but he would be damned if it was more than four.
“Name’s Sergeant Mackey, what’s yours?”
“Name is Og, these are my boys,” Og replied with a deep nod in an equally deep voice. “Our cannon gone, we help you?”
“That’s right, Og, I could use your help,” Mackey replied patiently. He pointed to the rubble littering their area of the wall. “Can you help us move some of the larger chunks of rubble into a defensive position?”
“We help!” Exclaimed Og’s Boys, who, after a nod from Og himself, rushed to go help clear the area and make it more defensible. After a moment, Og followed his men and moved some of the heavier chunks himself into place.
“Sir, you need to see this,” Ramirez called out. Mackey walked over, then gingerly looked over the wall. He wished he didn’t.
Chugging through the cloud of dust kicked up from the explosion was a crudely up-armored diesel burner, emphasis on the burning due to the thick black clouds that flowed from either side, that pulled along a score of modified gondola cars that carried hundreds of raiders along their lengths. Mackey could make out dozens of boarding ramps along each side of the gondolas, perfect for boarding another Engine or smaller locomotive, or in what he had a sickening feeling was about to happen: allow troops to disembark to plunder, destroy, and cause general mayhem to their heart’s content.
On the plus side, those ramps aren’t tall enough to get up to us... Mackey thought to himself as he reached a hand to the small of his back. As the Engine rolled forward, picking up speed, he pulled out a small large-bore pistol, inserted a large purple shell into it, and aimed it up in the air. He waited several moments to let the dust settle down a slight bit more as the third car passed below his position, and he could hear the raiders chanting something unintelligible.
“Are you ready for the fight of your lives, lads?” He asked nobody in particular.
“Ready whenever you are, Sarge,” several of his troops replied.
“We’ll give ‘em hell like they’ve never seen!” Exclaimed others.
Og just gave him an unseen thumbs up as Og carefully picked up a large sledgehammer from the cannon pit. Others still picked up as-yet-undistributed shells with looks of innocent glee as they prepared to throw them.
Sergeant Mackey pulled the trigger, and seconds later a purple star shone bright in the darkening skies. Now all of Redclyff knows you’re coming.