Raleigh felt as if his heart was about to burst out of his chest as he gazed at the inert shells that had fallen to the ground from the small cart before him. He silently thanked his lucky stars that the shells were not armed, evidence thereof being the white paper tags attached via strings to the tips of the shells. What in all the hells was that explosion?
“No time to sit around, lad!” The Colonel stated, his voice full of concern as he gazed northwards. He held a hand out to Raleigh, and helped the man up. “Gather your squad, we’re heading to that explosion.”
“Just us sir,” Raleigh indicated himself and Rob. The Colonel nodded and briskly jogged away.
The Colonel led the duo down a nearby stairwell built into the wall on the opposite side of the tracks. It took them several minutes to get to the ground level, and even longer for them all to rush the distance to the city proper.
All sounds of artillery fire had ceased in the wake of the explosion to the north, as if their enemies to the south had not expected it. The peace did not last long, as when the men reached the halfway mark, the shelling resumed. The remaining cannons along the south wall were going into a rapid-fire pace to stave off something coming their way.
They were not the only people rushing northwards, but they were the first to get to one of the dozens of rapid-transit trolleys that would take them through the center of town and over to the north wall within fifteen minutes. The trolley was just a stripped-down civilian version with a small plow riveted into place on the front to remove debris from the tracks, and three unpowered carts that were loaded up with chairs and supplies, enough to fit twenty human-sized people, or ten Ogkyn apiece. None of the trolleys and carts had their roofs or decorative siding anymore, both due to damage sustained over the siege, and being stripped down to the barest of essentials to help fuel the war effort.
Once their train was loaded, the Colonel ordered it to move out at its fastest pace while he stood up on the first car and took a headcount.
“Alright lads, I won’t lie to you,” he began, “We’re going north to investigate just what the bloody hell happened.”
As he said that, purple stars were bursting to life at intervals over the city. Nobody missed them and the Colonel fell silent.
“Scratch that then, we’re going into hell boys and girls.” He made a show of checking the ammunition on the massive revolver at his side, and then slung a plain pump-action shotgun across his front from a conveniently placed weapons rack, it even had a wicked looking bayonet on the front. “Feet first into hell! Who’s with me?”
The cry of righteous fury that came from the throats of the twenty people and five armored Ogkyn on the train by all rights should have shaken the nearby mountains to their roots.
=====================================================================
Sergeant Mackey was not having a good day. First his designated post gets blown up by maniacs, and now more maniacs are trying to charge up the rubble mountain that was the northern gate to kill his people. As soon as he had launched the flare, the Engine below them had sped up until it crashed rather gently into the large chunk of debris that had crashed down earlier along the Engine Rails. Five of the cars had followed the Engine into the Station-fortress, leaving another ten outside the wall.
Once that had happened, the hundreds of raiders had dropped the ramps and charged out of their train, many had charged straight into the city, and he could hear the sounds of gunfire interspersed with the screams of civilians who were caught up in the fighting. Of more immediate concern for him, however, was the fact that there were hundreds of raiders that had swarmed from the cars that had not yet gotten into the city and were climbing the rubble. The other side of the man-made valley was silent, and raiders were pouring onto the top of the wall with wild abandon. On his side, however, the troops under his command had just repelled the third wave of attackers.
“They just don’t know when to give up, do they?” Chuckled his engineer, Smith over the din of the gunfire. He had just magically thrown a chunk of red sharpened concrete at a flamethrower-toting raider, puncturing the tank and leaving flammable liquid spilling out. A followup shot from one of the soldiers managed to get some sparks off and set a large portion of the wall on fire. A small cheer was aborted as the shooter’s head turned into a pink mist.
“Aye, they don’t,” Mackey deadpanned. “Think you can fix up the wall a bit more?”
“Almost out of mana, Sarge,” Smith sighed. “Our section won’t be collapsing any time soon,” to which they both darkly smiled as a chunk of the opposite side caved in and caused the deaths of dozens of raiders.
“But?”
“But I can’t adjust the wall below due to all the people down there,” Smith waved a hand at the raiders that even now were trying to climb their way up.
In the time he’d had, Smith had managed to return structural integrity to the top five feet of concrete where the squad was holding up, as well as make it so that the chunks of rubble that had been placed to form a small wall had smoothed out and become one whole chunk of solid red concrete. The squad was only covering a small portion of the upper breach, but anyone who tried getting up via the unsecured portion was wide open for a shot in the back or sides.
Og picked up one of their dwindling supply of cannon shells, ripped out the disarming tag and cord from the tip, gave it a small twist to arm it, then threw the shell with surprising precision at a cluster of raiders. The shell detonated with a satisfying boom after passing through the torso of an axe-wielding maniac. “If it were just one or two people, I could compensate for their mana interference, but with that many? No chance for now.”
A small metallic orb landed between the two of them, and Mackey casually pulled the handy pin on it and tossed it back at it’s owner. It let out a small, yet satisfying, kaboom halfway down the wall.
“Right then, rest a little and drink this. We’ll need you to help stabilize things further once we push those bastards back, or get more help to secure this breach.” Mackey put a reassuring hand on Smith’s shoulder while handing him a softly glowing blue canteen, then went over to the defensive point.
Their machine gun’s water jacket was letting off steam from a small rupture in the side, but the operators kept operating the weapon with practiced ease. He half-wished that his squad had been issued one of the newer air-cooled ones, but those were currently reserved for the Stationmaster’s royal guard. The two ladies manning the gun, an orc and a dwarf funnily enough, were having the time of their lives.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Gods above, I love a target rich environment!” The dwarf exclaimed as she linked a new belt to the rapidly disappearing one already in the gun. With a wave of her hand, the escaping steam from the water jacket coalesced into a stream of water and made its way down into the water tank set up next to her partner.
“I know, right? It’s like shooting fish in a barrel!” The orc replied with a guttural laugh. The dwarf finalized the linkage, then held up both hands as a light golden barrier appeared in front of the gun, intercepting a hail of bullets heading their way.
“Glad you two are having fun,” Mackey chimed in. “See if you can’t train the gun over to the other side, they’re overrun.”
With a grunt, the weapon turned to face the opposite side of the valley. Scores of raiders went down as soon as the trigger was pulled, causing a small cascade of falling enemies further down the ramp.
He nodded, and popped a few shots of his own over the wall at some of the more stand-out raiders, which he theorized were of equivalent rank to him, seeing as they had more armor and flashier designs compared to the rest. Of the four he targeted, one stayed up, seemingly having more armor on their rear than the others.
As Mackey ducked back into cover, he noticed two things. Firstly, there was another Engine coming down one of the other lines, fitted with two dozen tall box cars, also equipped with boarding ramps. Swarms of raiders were also running along the wide Engine Rails on either side of the Engine, each rail wide enough for an automobile to drive across with little room for error. The second was as he turned fully, and saw friendlies rushing to his position. He did not see a single officer among the twenty-man blob heading towards him, however.
“You lot!” He shouted to the newcomers who were still a minute away at a decent jog. “[MOVE MOVE MOVE!]”
The System recognized him activating one of his few hourly Orders, and sped up the newcomers by fifty percent of their Dexterity stat. Everyone had been trained extensively for times when they would be under a System-backed Order, so thankfully none of them stumbled as they suddenly found themselves much faster than they had been. A small green glow suffused the soldiers that slowly wore off as they grew closer.
“Corporal Waters, sir,” panted the first of the group to reach Mackey’s position. “Lieutanant Flyff’s regards, she sent us as soon as the gate was breached.”
“Good lass,” he sighed in relief. “Hope you brought plenty of ammunition, there’s a lot of the bastards down below.”
Waters saluted, the human taking up a position nearby and soon joining her fire to the rest, keeping the tide of attackers at bay. Thankfully, the group had brought a few more engineers like Smith, who all began extending the fortified position in unison while their fellows held the wall and made sure the engineers had all the time they needed.
=====================================================================
The southern section of Redclyff was burning. Hundreds upon hundreds of raiders had poured into the fortress, pillaging, burning, and killing anyone in their wake.
Raleigh and his allies had already encountered dozens of the drugged up psychos that made up the vanguard of the Jetstream Fleet’s assault within the fortress, leaving scores of the foreigners dead in the rubble-strewn streets.
“Goddamn butchers,” one of the soldiers muttered as they swept their gaze to the upper levels of the buildings the group was advancing alongside. The outburst was in reference to the fact that dozens more civilians of all ages were strewn about in the cold embrace of death.
“They’ll all get what’s coming to them,” The Colonel replied with restrained fury. He urged his troops to move faster with one of his Command Skills.
With the five armored Ogkyn leading the way, their massive shields at the fore, the group had been making good time over the last hour after their trolley had been hit by a raider with a single-shot rocket launcher before they were even halfway to the north wall. Everyone had survived intact, though concerns were running high that any raiders had managed to strike so deep, so soon after the explosion.
As they approached the halfway point through the massive Engine Gate Station, which was a grandiose structure carved into the remnants of a mountain that had been in Redclyff’s way millennia ago, the group stopped to take in the sight before them. Polished black marble with streaks of precious metals lined the walkways, while red marble made up the walls and ceilings. The style was long long out of, pardon the term, style, with art-deco themes galore, compared to the utilitarian architecture outside.
On either end of the Station was a massive stone archway, which formed either end of the Gate, and in the very center was what some called the ‘control arch’, where the flip of a lever determined which end of the Station the Engines would appear from. The lever currently lay broken and shattered, with the barest hint of a stub pointing to the north end.
Several small destroyed locomotives that were painted in Redclyff Heavy Industries livery had been commandeered by the raiders and run south before running into a unit of the Royal Guard and two platoons of reserve soldiers that had been stationed at the center of the Gate Station as an honor guard for the hopefully-arriving-soon Conductor.
A small stage had been set up in the center of the four pairs of Engine Rails that ran through the area, the stage itself being straddled between several smaller locomotive flatbed cars on the smaller rails that ran between the thick Engine Rails. Chairs, decorations, and streamers lay scattered around the area, and several large tables had been upended facing northwards, but they did little to provide true protection to the men and women who lay dead upon the stage.
The unit of Royal Guard had been small, only ten men in their unique heavy armor, but they had reaped a bloody toll upon the dozens of raiders from the first two trains as they died to a man. Raleigh had checked their ammunition backpacks, finding them empty and the weapons missing. Two of the Royal Guard had died standing to raiders wearing heavy armor, their hands still gripped around their bayonet’s handles which had been rammed deep into their foe’s torso near the neck, their standard air-cooled machine guns broken and discarded nearby.
Raleigh stood up after inspecting one of the fallen Guard, noting that the red ruby lenses of the man’s air filtration mask had been pried out and were nowhere to be seen, a similar fate shared with all but the two standing dead men.
“There’s a survivor,” one of the squad called out, standing near a hastily-erected barricade next to a bathroom. Raleigh rushed over to help, as he had a small medkit on his person and the hastily gathered group had no healers yet.
“It’s alright, you’ll be okay,” Raleigh calmly stated as he rounded the barricade and took in the sight before him. Half a dozen men in his uniform lay dead, their equipment stolen. The lone survivor was also missing his equipment, and Raleigh pulled out a small red vial from his medkit upon seeing just how badly the man was injured. He knelt down in the sticky pool by the man’s side and tipped the vial into the soldier’s throat, and in moments a light red glow suffused the man’s body.
With a cough, the man sat up. “Thank you, sirs. We were overrun thirty minutes ago. Bastards stole four trains from the northern section.” Another wracking cough hit the man, ejecting a wad of bloody phlegm.
“Woah woah, easy there!” The Colonel piped up as he crouched down, an arm set out to keep the soldier from falling back. “Did you see where the other two went?”
“No, sir, sorry sir. The first we knew of trouble was the four trains stopping, and then a shitton of bullets getting slung our way. The fight lasted a few minutes, but then I took a hit and got dragged back here. But uh... I don’t know by who, wasn’t one of ours or theirs.”
This immediately tensed up the newcomers, who began looking at the grandiose area for signs of others. The area was eerily silent, and Raleigh noticed that along every single massive archway --spaced roughly every two hundred feet apart and over a hundred high-- were two glowing runes. The nearest archway flickered, leaving a single rune, the others rapidly following suit.
Silence descended upon the station as the soldiers looked around, half expecting enemies to pop up at any moment. After a few moments with nothing happening, the Colonel gave the order to continue moving north.