“Both of you, stay here and stand guard over the prisoner,” she said, striding past Ninmah with a sneer as she headed straight for the front door. “Maim her if she tries to escape, but do not kill her. She is of great importance to the worm village.”
The two carpenter ant builders saluted her, standing off to the sides of the doorway as she leaped—off the edge of the stairs, out into the howling blizzard, and landed on level ground with a crunch of thick snow beneath her boots.
Her antennae tingled in the cold, but she paid them no mind as she trudged towards the front gate, fanned by a small contingent of soldiers each trying to relay as much information as they could to her; she had no interest in what any of them had to say. Even as she stomped out the opened front gate and joined the rest of her hundred and fifty soldiers—all of them either taking cover behind mushroom barricades, inside snow trenches, or above vine wall ramparts—she already knew they were facing no wild horde of Boreus rushing down the thousand-metre slope. The blizzard was too strong for that. Even the trenches and the walls were lit only by a few dozen braziers burning like flares in a fierce locust storm. The Boreus, as far as she knew, didn’t possess night vision to peer through any fog.
But the worm children might, with their unknown mutations.
So, once she was a good ten metres out from the front gate, she dug her heels into the snow. Established the borders of the Attini Empire. She crossed her arms behind her back, ignored the winds whipping her hair into her face, and glared at the shadows standing two hundred metres up the slope directly in front of her—they were so vague and blurry and still in the blizzard that she was rather surprised her guards even spotted them at all.
There were… five of them.
Maybe ten.
Maybe twenty.
But it was difficult to tell, and frankly, she didn’t exactly care how many of them there were.
All of them were cowards incapable of warfare.
“... Come on out!” she shouted, barely raising her voice; she knew very well the worm children had senses keen enough to hear her every word. “Your village chief has told us all about your numbers and fighting strength! None of you have any training! None of you can fight back! Surrender all your weapons now, and we will not harm you any more than necessary as we return you to the Attini Empire!”
A simple declaration, but an effective one. She was confident enough in her strength that she was willing to stand in front of her brave soldiers, because two hundred metres in this roaring blizzard was like two thousand—the worm children didn’t have mortars, so there was no way they had other ranged weapons capable of shooting her from afar. They wouldn’t engage the Boreus in melee hunts otherwise. Even if the two former ant soldiers in their midst knew how to operate bolt-action rifles, their ranges had to be drastically reduced by the blizzard… and even if they could aim accurately, their bullets would lose immense speed in the winds. They’d bounce right off her and her soldiers’ tough chitin skin.
So she simply stood at attention and waited for a reply, face tough as steel.
Foolish.
Nobody can aim at anything in this snow.
The moment all of you drop your weapons, that will be our cue to fire back–
The shadows vanished, and a single gunshot rang through the air. She didn’t flinch, but the soldiers taking cover behind the barricades and under the trenches did, quickly ducking as several more shots rang out in quick succession. Turning immediately was unnecessary. Only once the series of gunshots ended did she glance around slowly, a dark scowl taking her face as she stared at the sentence spelled out in bullet holes on the raised wooden gate.
“Is she safe?”
… In Attini Tongue, no less. The handwriting wasn’t very good. Some of the letters were wobbly, and the whole sentence was slanted at an odd angle, but the marksman in question knew how to write. Kuraku clicked her tongue and whirled back around, cold eyes scanning the slope in front of her for any signs of the shadows, but they’d only let themselves been seen earlier—if they were donning the same alabaste-white cloak as Ninmah was wearing, they’d be nigh-invisible lying stomach-down in the snow. Trying to spot them in still silence was going to be impossible.
She didn’t back down nevertheless; the bullet hole taunt didn’t intimidate her.
“Your village chief is still alive, albeit a bit cold and out of breath!” she shouted back, clenching her throat, putting more force into her voice. “However, I cannot guarantee her safety if you do not drop your weapons and show yourselves within fifteen seconds! It is in your best interests to prioritise the health of your chief and your eldest!”
Silence for another moment.
Then another series of shots, another simultaneous flinch for all of her soldiers in cover. She glanced around this time to see a second message spelled out under the first, and this time, it was just a single word.
The letters weren’t wobbly.
The word wasn’t slanted.
“Release.”
…
Like hell she was going to do that after all the effort she’d gone through to capture the chief.
“I am Kuraku, Vice-general of the Hagi’Shar Forward Army, weapons of the Empress and Her Four Families of the Attini Empire!” she roared, shoulders trembling, snow quaking under her boots, her hands still clasped behind her back, but her fingers were claws drawing blood from her palms; ‘anger’ surged forth from her chest and took over her face once more. “I will repeat myself no further! You have ten seconds to drop your rifle and surrender yourself! For the Attini Empire, we will claim Hagi’Shar as our own–”
Three shots rang through the air, and she immediately whirled to look at the raised wooden gate.
There were no bullet holes there.
Two shots rang through the air, and she swivelled her head left and right, checking on the mushroom barricades and the trenches and the thorny vine walls.
No bullet holes there either.
And when only one shot rang through the air, one last time, she jerked her arm up and realised the shots as what they were—a countdown to the beginning of a firefight.
But calling it a ‘fight’ was gratuitous.
Seven shots nailed seven soldiers peeking out from behind their covers in their heads, throwing their bodies back in the snow. An eighth shot slammed into her open palm as she detonated the ants between her fingers at the same time, blowing up a wide smokescreen in front of her to cover the rest of her soldiers’ retreat into the outpost—and she bellowed for everyone to retreat, to abandon the mushroom barricades and the trenches and the top of the ramparts they couldn’t possibly hold from the low ground. She kicked off backwards and dashed through the front gate herself, but not before the marksmen finished reloading. Five more shots zipped through the blizzard from five different angles, piercing five more soldiers’ throats as they tried to sprint through the gate.
They can shoot from that distance?
Their eyes are impressive.
She clenched her teeth and flicked a cloud of ants at the gate, detonating the chains to seal the gateway. At the same time, three more soldiers who were slow to jump down from the ramparts had their heads snapped sideways, bullets finding marks between their eyes. Their bodies crashed into the snow around her, but she didn’t let them distract her; while the rest of the soldiers raced towards their barracks in the centre of the outpost, she knelt, slammed her palms in front of her, and hissed as much detonation pheromone as she could release through her teeth.
Two seconds later, the thousands of crimson ants she’d ordered to burrow inside the north-facing section of the vine walls exploded, lighting the entire wall aflame with a bone-rattling boom.
[Strain: 5% → 15%]
Snowfall melted into warm rain over the outpost. The braziers were no longer necessary. Visibility inside the outpost was as bright as a day in the Sharaji Desert. Kuraku pried her steaming palms from the snow and breathed out a puff of a fire, rising to her feet before continuing to run towards the centre of the outpost where her hundred and forty or so soldiers were quickly gathering—there, they’d be far enough from the slope that no marksman could possibly overcome the four hundred metre distance. Either he’d have to leap over the twenty-metre-tall wall of flames, or he’d have to circle around to either the western or eastern-facing walls that weren’t on fire before trying to break in; regardless, she’d bought her soldiers enough time to set up additional fortifications inside the outpost.
“In-fighting defensive formation!” she shouted, and her soldiers responded in kind. They’d all practised this manoeuvre many, many times in training. In the event they faced a vine wall breaching force, whole sections of inner mushroom barracks could be uprooted and tipped over, the giant spiked mushroom caps serving as emergency walls surrounding her office. Forty carpenter ant builders lifted their anti-chitin rifles and climbed atop the caps, mounting their heavy weapons on wooden tripods. Fifty mortar ant troops sprinted all around, loading the fungus sporespike mortars with rectangular shrapnel shells. The rest crawled up guard towers, storehouses, knelt in every corner of every road, laid in every dug trench, each taking up their preassigned positions to turn the outpost into an open deathtrap.
The in-fighting defensive formation invited invaders in by deliberating taking down a section of the walls, but nothing would be getting out of alive.
So Kuraku bombed the snow beneath her feet, propelled herself ten metres up to the giant mushroom cap of her office, and stomped hard once—driving the stalk of the mushroom into the earth to lower the cap, allowing twenty soldiers to jump up and raise rectangular shields around her in a circle formation.
… All of you are here, aren’t you?
She sank her hands into her hair, letting lines of exploding ants crawl onto her fingers, priming them for defensive explosions if the need arose. Ninmah wasn’t lying when she said the worm children were all children under fourteen of age, which meant the number of worm children above ten years old were likely only twenty, maybe thirty; that matched the number of shadows she’d spotted on the slope. Most likely, they were all of Immanu’s capable fighters—the rest would be too young for combat even by the Attini Empire’s standards—so if they were all defeated here, it’d be akin to crushing their legs and severing their hands.
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The vine walls were easy to regrow. The inner mushroom barracks could be replanted in half a day. A decisive defensive victory here would spell Immanu’s complete defeat, and there’d be no resistance from the worm children henceforth. She wouldn’t even need to bother the General with having to deal with them himself.
Come on, then.
Show me what you have.
Her soldiers were patient in every corner. Their rifles were raised, poised to fire the moment they spotted the slightest bit of movement inside the outpost, but their trigger discipline was impeccable as well. The crackling wall of flames didn’t make them panic. They wouldn’t even come close to shooting one of their own. The Attini Empire’s training couldn’t be outdone by a bunch of children who couldn’t even bring themselves to execute the silver ant scouts who’d stumbled upon their village.
If they’d never let the three silver ant scouts make it back to the border outpost, Kuraku wouldn’t be here.
Your lack of ruthlessness will be your downfall.
My soldiers are not half as merciful.
So, all of you will enter the outpost from the west, east, and south, because the wall of flames and smoke in the north is impeding your vision.
You cannot ‘warp’ through it.
After all, you are children who fear what you cannot see–
A gunshot zipped through the wall of flames, striking a soldier clung to a tall mushroom stalk right in the head.
Kuraku whirled, eyes twitching.
And as the rest of the soldiers turned at once, raising their rifles in the direction of the northern wall where no human could possibly think to leap through–
A gust of cold wind whistled through the flames with a low, vibrating voice in the air, and one shadow vaulted over the top of the wall of flames, the silver gleam of his rifle sights unmistakable.
… You do not fear, huh?
Without hesitation, her soldiers unloaded everything they had into the wall. Bullets flashed, mortar shells cracked the sky, and a thousand metal projectiles eviscerated the giant burning vines, sending debris flying in every conceivable direction. Utter annihilation of the northern wall. The ground quaked, the wind changed direction and blew outwards instead of inwards. Kuraku briefly lost her balance atop her mushroom cap as she braced her face with her arm, sending out a wide cloud of small explosions to intercept some of the debris flying at her shield soldiers—but when the smoke cleared and the soldiers started relaying information to one another with coloured pheromone trails in the air, she heard something crashing into the snow far to her left.
She turned. It was a mortar ant troop lying dead with a rifle in her arms.
That shadow…
He fired a counter shot while we threw everything at him?
The sound of more gunshots far, far to her left pulled her from her thoughts, and she peered over the upturned giant mushroom caps to see muzzle flashes. Soldiers perched atop storehouses and barracks falling off the roofs, shot dead. Seven of them plummeted in what felt like a mere ten seconds, but then shots far, far to her right had her whirling again; more soldiers were shot off their guard towers, not a single one of their rifles returning a counter shot before holes opened in their heads.
In an instant, the coloured pheromone trails in the air became a mess of directions and information. The wavy columns of red smoke meant they were engaging in combat, but there was only one shadow in the outpost. How could her soldiers be reporting fighting in the west and in the east at the same time?
… Interesting.
More gunshots rang out, staggered, but near enough that she could close her eyes and visualise the shadow’s movements: one second he’d be in the west, sniping her outer perimeter soldiers off their vantage points, and then in the next he’d head down south, engage a small patrol there, before going east to completely disorient their pheromone communications. Another twenty soldiers were shot off their posts by the time she opened her eyes. Bending over, she picked up and moulded a bunch of metal shrapnel into a ball, holding them in front of her face, listening tentatively as the forty mounted anti-chitin rifles pulverised the buildings outside the centre of the outpost where she was—the heavy calibre bullets were strong, but she already knew none of them would hit their mark.
One by one by one, she listened as even her forty mounted rifle soldiers were sniped off their mushroom caps, and when there were only twenty soldiers remaining in their shield formation around her–
The shadow ‘warped’ onto a distant mushroom cap, firing a shot directly between her eyes.
I knew it.
She lashed out with her ball of shrapnel, detonating the ants she’d smeared on it midair to make the scrap fan out like a shotgun of explosions. Violent flames obliterated the entire mushroom cap the shadow had been standing on. Immediately, her antennae tingled again—to her right. She flicked her hand to the side to send out a wave of small explosion clouds, intercepting the bullet flying at her, and then her shield soldiers immediately returned fire. Their bullets weren’t heavy calibre, but every last one of them shooting at the same time demolished the mushroom cap he’d been standing on all the same.
“Fire at will with zero concerns for your safety!” she shouted, running her hands through her hair to reload her ants. “I will handle the defence!”
As the shadow continued warping circles around her central mushroom, her soldiers backed into her, tightening their circle formation. Their rifles were pointed in every single direction. Between each shot the shadow fired at them that she intercepted with her superior reflexes and perceptivity, her soldiers countered with a barrage of bullets; there were ammo crates tucked around her, and the way they were all clumped together, eight of them could reload at any given time without a break in the rhythm of fire. If it was a battle of attrition, they most certainly wouldn’t run out of bullets before the shadow would run out of stamina.
Whatever bullets the shadow was using, they were slow enough for her to intercept. Sooner or later, her soldiers would shoot down every last building he could be using for his vantage points, and there’d be nowhere for him to run. Nowhere to hide. If it came down to a firefight on a flat battlefield–
Thud!
She turned. She blinked. One of her twenty remaining soldiers fell dead next to her, a bullet hole bored into his eye.
... What?
Then it happened again, to her right, another soldier in the middle of reloading slamming headfirst into an open ammo crate. The back of his head was blown open. This time, she caught the slightest glimpse of something disappearing mid-air, and immediately afterwards her antennae tingled. She whirled preemptively.
It was unbelievable.
A glowing circle the size of a silver coin carved itself into existence right next to an unaware soldier’s head, and then a bullet flew out of the circle, bypassing her interception range completely. Her eyes widened as the third soldier fell slump and the circle closed; another circle opened next to her own head.
‘Wormhole’.
She gritted her teeth and tanked the bullet as it flew through the wormhole. Her chitin and high toughness level combined made it so the projectile only rocked her head to the side, making her stumble, making her twirl in place and shout at everyone to disperse; her soldiers obliged without question, rolling out of formation to take point around her mushroom cap. The rest of the outpost was an inferno. Their first barrage on the burning vine walls had scattered the flaming debris everywhere, and now the air was beyond warm. Beyond blue and dark. They could see everything clearly and yet nothing clearly at the same time for how wavy the flames were, and that–
Gave the shadow an opportunity to warp through the fire, running his bayonet through the back of a soldier facing the wrong way.
… Ah.
I see.
The shadow warped through the dispersed formation with every step, his cloak tails fluttering behind him for only half a second before he’d reappear somewhere else, somewhere the soldiers couldn’t keep up with their low perceptivity. Blood was born on his bayonet. He kicked one soldier into a wooden spike in the west, then grabbed another’s head by the east before running a flying knee into her face. Two soldiers fired at him from two separate directions, but he cracked his bones and dislocated his joints and dodged both bullets with an inhuman twist, returning two counter shots while his bayonet was mid-swing into another soldier’s neck.
The Hagi’Shar Forward Army consisted of four battalions, and three of them were handpicked by the General himself.
A soldier rushed the shadow, obsidian-edged knife unsheathed, but he shattered the knives with his alabaster teeth and then warped behind her, onto her shoulders, ripping a chunk out of her neck like a feral beast.
The carpenter ant builders are our disposable frontline. Their high strength and building-related mutations make them fit for establishing and holding outposts in Swarm territory. There is always use for the Carpenter Ant Battalions in any Forward Army.
Another soldier managed to knock the shadow down to the ground, slamming the side of his face against the snow. Instead of untangling himself, though, he wrapped his legs tighter around the soldier’s waist and twisted, making the soldier absorb friendly fire. A moment later, he was free; propping up the same body as a bullet sponge as he fired back at three more soldiers, chambering each shot with the same hand he used to pull the trigger.
The mortar ant troops are our backline support. Their innate spores and mutations that facilitate the growth of fungus-related constructs make them indispensable against the Swarm. As long as they are fed and kept alive, the Mortar Ant Battalions can continue to grow fungus bullets and mortar shells for the rest of a Forward Army.
Seven soldiers remained. Each of them slid to the outer edges of the battlefield, right next to the circular wall of flames, but if they thought fire scared him, they thought wrong. He disappeared and reappeared lunging through the flames with his bayonet, piercing the throat of one soldier. The rest whirled and fired at once, but by now they were running out of bullets, and he seemed to have an endless number of them; two, three, four more soldiers met their end with bullets through their foreheads, and the last two stood back to back, their stances unwavering, only realising now that they would never catch the shadow with a projectile.
The silver ant scouts are our information units. Their absurd stamina and sense of balance make them incredible at infiltrating deep into Swarm territory. They don’t require a lot of food to sustain. They can take heavy beatings, lose a few limbs, and still manage to crawl back with important information between their teeth. It is not a Forward Army without the fleet-footed to lead the way.
The shadow warped between the two remaining soldiers. They swung their bayonets at the same time, but he ducked, shattered one of their rifles with his bandaged fist, and then kicked the soldier into the fire. The second pressed forward with a series of swipes: up down, left, right, and then slam. Wooden stock going sky to ground. She wasn’t fast enough with her attack, though, and the shadow dodged the slam with a half-step warp, immediately worming around her to wrap her neck in a chokehold facing Kuraku.
… And, by Capital law, all Forward Armies that travel past Empire borders must bring at least one Bullet Ant Battalion with them.
This is because the ‘Attini Empire Front’ is not only at conflict with the Swarm, but with the humans of other Swarmsteel Fronts as well.
Therefore, even if our objective as a Forward Army is to exterminate all Swarm from Hagi’Shar, if we encounter soldiers from another faction mid-campaign, we must have at least one anti-human battalion prepared to deal with them.
Kuraku watched, lips pursed, as the shadow slit the last soldier’s throat with his gleaming silver bayonet.
Bullet ant soldiers.
Anti-human specialists.
And, if I recall correctly, this boy in front of me is…
…
“… Ah,” she murmured, eyes twinkling with amusement as the boy tossed the soldier’s corpse away, wiping blood off his bayonet with his sleeve. “The exceptional marksman of the battalion with the eyes of a sparrow. You were the one the General ordered to stay behind and cover our retreat five months ago, weren’t you?”
No response.
The boy who could spell a sentence with bullet holes couldn’t speak without cutting his tongue off, after all.
“I’ve heard rumours that you can fire seven shots in a single second with your bolt-action rifle,” she said, running her arms through her hair to coat them with a sheen of glowing, blast-ready ants. “Have you betrayed the Attini Empire, ‘Seven-Shot’ Sparrow?”