The Hagi’Shar blizzard had weakened over the month. The sky was a pale, washed-out grey, but the clouds were heavy with the promise of more snowfall to come. The Attini Empire’s first forward campaign into the wintry region was an utter disaster; three thousand soldiers armed to the teeth had marched north to reclaim the blackrock mountain ranges, but the Boreus had been stronger than anyone had expected. One thousand and eighteen soldiers had died that cold night. Six hundred of them from the Carpenter Ant Battalions, two hundred from the Silver Ant Battalions, and the rest scattered between the Bullet Ant and Mortar Ant Battalions—a third of their army completely gutted overnight.
But the General hadn’t sat down and accepted his defeat, and they were still far from defeat.
He’d ordered their hasty retreat down south, and somehow, over the past month, the remaining thousand or so soldiers of the Carpenter Ant Battalions had managed to rally their resources. With Vice-general Kuraku heading flank defence and himself taking to the frontlines, they’d managed to construct an outpost: a rough collection of fungus-grown barracks, storehouses for their weaponry, and twenty-metre-tall walls constructed entirely out of fast-growing vines. It only took them a week of non-stop fighting to get the walls grown and their fungus spike mortars entrenched again; since then, they’d been able to drive the pursuing Boreus back and stabilise, cementing themselves in the heart of the Hagi’Shar.
They were too far from the Capital to easily request reinforcements, but not so far from the blackrock mountains where the Boreus nest most certainly lay.
“... You’re going to break your table if you keep tapping at it like that, General,” Kuraku said stiffly, her thick red hair having lost most of its lustre from overuse of her abilities the past month; it’d take her a month of rest to get its colour back. “If it’s restlessness you feel for having been plucked from the southern frontlines to lead a Forward Army in the northern Hagi’Shar instead, then please, feel free to order me around as you wish. I am certain you would come to your senses afterwards and make the correct decision.”
“...”
As far from ‘restless’ as he could be, the General stopped tapping his fingers on his desk and rose to his feet, angling his head to look at Kuraku. Though her stony expression barely shifted, he perceived her thoughts she wasn’t willing to speak; he most certainly had his own thoughts about the situation as well, but they may not align with hers. For her own sake, her lips had to remain sealed.
The best she could do, then, was offer him her cup of fermented corn alcohol.
“It’s the only thing the soldiers have left to drink,” she said dryly. “They say it lifts the weight off your shoulders and puts it in your ankles. A man of your power should have no issue tolerating that.”
His lips thinned into a line, but he shook his head. Alcohol was a no-go in his position. He had to be clear of mind, disciplined in body and spirit—even a single cup of chico wasn’t something he could afford to put in his stomach right now.
So, he decided to stop sitting around in his office. The giant hollow mushroom the Carpenter Ant Battalions had grown explicitly for him and Kuraku to look over the rest of the outpost from above was more comfortable than any of the soldiers’ low mushroom barracks, but they couldn’t open the windows because snow would blow in and damage the maps and documents he’d scattered across the war table; there was no point in him being here if he couldn’t even get a breath of fresh air.
“Follow me,” he said, crossing his arms behind his back as he nudged the front door open with his foot. Kuraku dipped her head in silent acknowledgement and followed him out onto the spiralling staircase, walking circles around the stalk of the mushroom until they were back on ground level.
His brows furrowed hard enough to wrinkle his forehead as he started trudging through the outpost, moonlight falling harsh and cold.
There was the smell of gunpowder and blood everywhere, mingling with the crisp scents of yeast and snow. All the seeds the Carpenter Ant Battalions brought to the campaign were bioluminescent, which meant every single hollow mushroom building in the outpost glowed a faint, eerie bluish hue that flickered whenever stepped in and out. Here, by the barracks, movement was mostly nonexistent—most of the surviving two thousand soldiers were sleeping or dozing off in bunks carved into the mushroom stalks. The wounded were the only ones afforded bunks inside the relatively warmer mushroom. Some sat around stools inspecting their rifles and swords with machinic care, weapons stripped down and every piece examined, cleaned, and reassembled. Others were still sitting around campfires, warmth a precious commodity. Despite rations having been distributed evenly and tonight being the most peaceful night they’ve had since their retreat, there wasn’t a single word spoken in the barracks; the only people allowed to speak in this campaign were him and Kuraku.
He kept trudging through, his face turning into a dark grimace.
Beyond the barracks, the hundred sporespike fungus mortars were being reloaded, anti-chitin shrapnel shells clinking as they were harvested and stacked in preparation. The Mortar Ant Battalions suffered the least during the first battle, but there was still a heaviness in the air around the two hundred of them as they moved, mindless, trying to get their long-range artillery ready for the next wave of Boreus attacks. Far from the nests, the number of daily Boreus attacks were reducing day by day—they probably realised attacking into this entrenched outpost was going to be a futile effort, anyways—but the mortars had to be firing every single hour of the day just to break up the evenness of the surrounding plains of snow. The ear-shattering booms had to be consistent to tell the giant insects they were still alive and kicking; too long a lull in the fire would signal they’d run out of steam entirely.
He kept trudging through, the abyss in his eyes colder than steel.
If his office was the centre of the outpost, surrounded immediately by a ring of barracks, then a ring of mortars, the mass graves were the fourth ring closest to the walls. The graves were being dug just fifty metres off to the side of his office, a hundred thickly layered carpenter ant builders stabbing their shovel-shaped hands into the frozen earth, muscles straining to bury the corpses the Silver Ant Battalions were still sneaking out and bringing back from the battlefield every few hours or so—a dangerous but necessary operation. They couldn’t risk letting the Boreus devour the bodies of their fallen soldiers lest the giant insects grew exponentially stronger. Even a common soldier’s body was biologically augmented enough that its consumption could lead to the birth of a Mutant, and having to deal with the one leading the Boreus nest was already enough of an obstacle.
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He kept trudging through, eventually reaching the thorny vine walls that stood between them and utter annihilation.
Twenty metres tall. A circular wall of rosen-fungus vines rooted deep in the earth that ran around the entire outpost with a hundred metre radius. The Capital had given his Carpenter Ant Battalions enough seeds to make several hundreds of metres more walls if that was what was needed to demarcate their territory, but three thousand child soldiers was all he’d been given to protect it. Even now, in the dead of night when they were most vulnerable to a Boreus attack, there were only around five hundred soldiers perched atop the vines, doing their best to keep a lookout; three thousand may be all the Capital could afford to give him, considering the main army was busy in the ferocious southern frontlines and there were a dozen other Forward Armies conquering other territories at the same time, but was he expected to win a child’s war with only three thousand soldiers after all?
The General wasn’t sure.
And when he waved at two of the carpenter ant guards to cast their spores at the wall, making the thorny vines squirm and pull away into an opening for him to wade through, he got his answer.
… Quiet.
So very, very quiet.
He surveyed the endless plains of snow outside the outpost, eyes sunken. It was still snowing thickly. The fog was still lingering in the air. He could faintly see the the target of his conquest; the blackrock mountains were a mere several thousand metres in front of him, but no doubt at least a hundred Boreus were hiding in the plains of snow, just waiting for any ant to carelessly wander out of mortar and rifle range—so it was a miracle he could still spot several silver ant scouts crawling back and forth along the snow, dragging corpses back to the outpost one by one.
The fleet-footed Silver Ant Battalions were the Empire’s best scouts, and they were probably the only ones who could reach the blackrock mountains right now without getting detected by the Boreus. If he could have them do more than corpse retrieval—if he could have them venture deep into the blackrock mountains and locate the Boreus nest—then maybe they still stood a chance at achieving victory without another massive wave of casualties.
Maybe.
“... If we do nothing, our rations will run out in another three months,” Kuraku said plainly, standing abreast with him as he stared at a faraway silver ant scout reaching the walls, dragging two corpses behind her. The carpenter ant builders by that section made an opening and immediately let her in. “Our bullets and our anti-chitin shrapnel shells can be regrown endlessly as long as the Carpenter Ant and Mortar Ant Battalions have enough strength to shed their spores, so rations are our only limiting factor. As long as we can sustain ourselves with a steady food source, our soldiers will not die, and we can hold this outpost indefinitely.”
His gaze turned up to the Brightmoon, a silent, appraising assessment. “But now that the Boreus know we are here, they will mutate and evolve accordingly. In a war of attrition, they will eventually overpower us through sheer brute force and numbers. How long do you think we can ‘sustain’ ourselves indefinitely before their endlessly growing strength catches up to us?”
Kuraku pursed her lips, lowering her head. “If we can secure a steady food source, we can look to increase the average strength of every soldier under our command. We will grow stronger, too–”
“And how many children will die in our war for a pyrrhic victory?”
“...”
The crestfallen look on Kuraku made him shake his head, and his gaze lingered on the Brightmoon for only a few seconds longer before he turned around, walking back into the outpost.
“How many silver ant scouts do we still have?” he asked.
“Two hundred and fifteen,” Kuraku replied promptly. “If you would like me to order a complete retreat to the Capital, I will have all of them returned to this outpost by tomorrow–”
“Send all of them out into the blackrock mountains tomorrow morning,” he interrupted. “Their mission is to investigate the general location of the Boreus nest around the blackrock mountains. Fit them with as little equipment as we can afford to give them. Instruct them not to return until they have gathered enough information—and in the meantime, retrieval of our soldiers’ corpses will be put to a standstill. The Boreus can grow stronger all they want by eating their corpses. We will strike instead the heart of their nest where their young are reared.”
Kuraku whirled, her face twisting into a dark scowl—but then she caught herself, her scowl melting into a face of stoic, unshakable composure.
“Understood, General. Is there anything else the Silver Ant Battalions need to be informed of?”
“Tell them to drag as many of their own corpses back as possible. I have need for them.”
“And for the monthly report I am to return to the Capital? What should I inform the Empress and Her Four Families?”
He paused.
His mind was made, his gaze was hardened; he turned to glare out at the plains of snow where the Swarm taunted him with their silence.
“If we retreat from Hagi’Shar now, the Boreus will fortify their defences,” he said sternly. “With the Royal Capital Army held down as a permanent fixture at the southern frontlines—the World End Wall—the Attini Empire will not be allowed to enter this region again. We will not be able to harvest the local resources and construct our Swarmsteel weapon factories. The Empress and Her Four Families will lose Hagi’Shar forever, and the Swarm will have claimed another victory.”
“...”
“... So tell the Empress and Her Four Families that I have no intention of ordering a retreat,” he finished, nodding at Kuraku. “Even if you and I and every last child in this outpost will die, we must eradicate every last giant insect and lay claim to the Hagi’Shar before the end of the year.”
Kuraku saluted, arm crossing her chest, and so he did the same; after all, death in battle is an honour for a warrior against the Swarm.
He was no less a soldier than he was a General.
And no soldier would ever stop being a soldier.
… For the Attini Empire.
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Arc One, “Immanu, The Village In-Between”, End