The swell off Redbrook was oddly high and choppy beneath the grey skies while the final stages of the fleet battle and bombardment concluded. An eerie silence had overtaken the sea after days of cautious long-distance gunnery that had broken out into a morning of utter chaos when the Imperial flotilla finally moved in. Thanks to the presence of the Dawnstorm, Redbrook’s batteries had been almost entirely silenced the day before. A long bubble turret remained sheltered in an open cavern on the face of a rocky moor overlooking a beach peppered with bunkers and trenches that had been dug in recent months to guard the road into town. The massive gun had managed to fire twice when the heavy frigates HMS Ironback and HMS Her Hand rounded the headland with a line of destroyers behind them. One shot had kicked up the water and the other had blown out the mostly empty tower bridge of Her Hand, killing her navigator and his mate. The turret itself was obliterated in the very first salvo from both ships. While Her Hand was steered out of the line with instruments by its master from the armored battle bridge deep in the ship’s citadel, the destroyers poured in to fill its place and formed a rapid picket around the wide bay.
On the other side of the island, it was said to be a bloodbath. In the landing transport HMS Rosenmaid, a Royal Navy lieutenant was worming his way with a clipboard between the milling marines lining up before an armory cage to get their rifles and armor. He was not the only officer of the transport to don full dress uniform for the day. After all, it was not often that a transport was entitled to join directly in a battle. Morale Corps men would likely take photos of the crews after the battle, and then there were also the clan ships to consider. Polished black jackboots swept and scissored with precise regularity in front of the open deployment hatches, stark against the white-green froth of the water and the stormy clouds outside. Outside another hatch, one could see the transports RCS Raincatcher and RCS Dewdrop coming into station with bright lights as brilliant pips against the dull environment. House Haradin fighting ships were said to be some of the finest on the Ten-Thousand Seas since Treistan Haradin had taken his plunge into militant madness, and the government men felt they had something to prove. That was why the Lieutenant took special care to maintain his most elegant, courtly bearing when approaching the end of the long deployment bay.
Four armored cars were parked on the open-top gantries of landing boats, with ramps extending down into their open backs, and arranged around these ramps in long green overcoats with shiny brass gorgets, bayoneted carbines, dull brown boots, and an extreme sense of placidity compared to the other men aboard; were forty of the Tribunal Committee’s own. Elite Corovokian Stormtroopers were a cut above the rank and file men, something that the Lieutenant had hoped would impress the young agent of the clan that had come over with Madame Tribune Rathbone. The Lieutenant was irritated to find the young man still looked incredibly displeased as he arrived in the center of the gaggle of marines to present the small woman next to him with the most perfect salute he could possibly deliver, the fingertips of crisp white gloves gently grazing the polished black visor of his peaked cap.
“Madame Tribune!” he reported in his perfect ‘pacing the quarterdeck’ voice, “Captain Hawking sends his best compliments and invites you to read a report of the attack on the northern bay, that it may help you best organize your men.”
Irina took the clipboard and returned the salute with a flippant equivalent that made the man visibly bristle while she scanned down the page. The storm troopers around her all made a show of continuing what they were doing, though there was a slight inward sense from their collective attention. It was as though each man had slightly widened the closest eye or ear to the little Tribune, though no man stopped wrapping gaiters around his ankle, wiping down his rifle, or loading magazines. Next to her, Arlo curiously tilted his head over to read what was on the clipboard as well and his already downcast features grew paler and more displeased. This caused the Navy Lieutenant to bristle even more and he must’ve been downright vibrating, because in the next instant he found the clanner’s eyes flicking up to him questioningly.
“Is there some sort of problem, sir?” asked the clanner. Arlo had allowed Irina to plait up his hair into a fat braid and then double that braid up into short cue behind his head for the sake of fitting a helmet that had not yet been given to him, and the change had drawn his skin back slightly in such a way as to give him somewhat more intense expressions. This, along with the ill-fitting too-large flack jacket he wore above his overcoat gave the lad an odd appearance of broad shoulders that fit poorly with his long and narrow head.
The Lieutenant pursed his lips, desperately trying to school his features into calm so he could answer, “I apologize if the Agent of House Haradin does not find the performance of Her Majesty’s Navy up to his standards.”
The clanner blinked twice with his eyes boggling at the response, and the Lieutenant was on the verge of withdrawing it at once when the Tribune laughed and elbowed Arlo in deep amusement. Arlo, on the other hand, did not look amused. He comported himself into something of a courtly bow and allowed one of his knees to emerge from his flak jacket.
“Sir, the Navy’s performance is the least of my concerns. I am impressed, pleased, and entirely gratified by every nautical act I’ve seen today.” he said generously, “There will be no chance for my uncle to ask how highly I praise your work, because I will be rushing to tell him all. It is I who apologize for my distracted demeanor. Carry on, sir.”
The Lieutenant was so blown away by the praise that he could only throw another crisp salute. Irina passed the clipboard back up to him with a much less polite sounding, “Alright, there you have it, then, hey? Tell the skipper I appreciate the report, of course, but unless he’s sending down some beer or some dancing girls for my lads, let’s just clap a stopper on the hospitality for now, shall we? Ta, dear.”
When the tightly-strung man was gone Irina shook her head at his retreating form, but still remarked, “Nice little backside on him, though, hey? Bet he’d look nice in a whalebone corset, Arlo.”
When Arlo only made a sour face and blushed, Irina rolled her eyes and sighed, then crossed her arms behind her back and surveyed the stormtroopers arrayed around her until she found the sergeant of D Squad. She took a few steps toward the man and clapped her hands, so that his helmeted face turned towards her with boggling, stupid questioning eyes.
“Oi, Johnson, gi’us a fag, hey? How about one for young Arlo back there, too?” she asked curtly, and was pleased when the huge man instantly produced a packet of her favorite brand and selected three. She lit his and her own from the same flame, then gently patted the top of his helmet to dismiss him. A quartermaster poked his head around the corner from a group of marines, poised to shout that there was no smoking in the deployment bay. When he saw the green greatcoat and peaked cap of a Tribune, he decided to let it slide this time and retreated back into the armory.
Irina approached Arlo once more and took the third cigarette into her lips, lit it with the one she was already smoking, and then presented it up to him. He took it cautiously, like an olive branch, and gave it a gentle pull.
“You read much of that report?” Irina asked in a hushed tone.
“Dawnspear and Pacifier sunk by some Khaldonite ship that was just a bunch of numbers.” Arlo responded, “Cloudsmasher sank another bunch of numbers and took one, but lost so many in the boarding they needed to wait for Ravenheart to crew the prize. Meaning we won’t be supported by Ravenheart down here anymore.”
“All them Khaldonite ships is just a number,” Irina informed Arlo around her cigarette with a somewhat detached expression. “A’cause all of them are named ‘Khaldon’s Ship’ is why. Or so I’m made to understand. But the bunkers out here on our side are quiet, which means they’re probably all machine guns, is more what I was thinking on.”
“What can we do about that?” returned Arlo.
“I reckon Commodore Rickets will ask your Dewdrop and Raincatcher to come in alongside the boats and support us with their swivels.” replied the Tribune, “I aim to have us in front of the marines with our armor to suppress what remains while they unload their gun trucks and set up the beachhead.”
“From there, it’s up the hill and into the town.” a new voice put in. Master Sergeant Slade was the actual commander of the body of men, though ultimately even he still answered to Irina. He was a tall man, even taller than Arlo and almost tall enough that he would’ve been able to see eye-to-eye with Placelle Lamella if the Oathkeeper had been there, with deep blue eyes and though his face was still quite youthful his hair had already greyed. He kept it cropped high and tight and even now idly rubbed his hand back and forth across his scalp to feel its uniform texture while he cradled his helmet under his free hand. Irina gave the man a respectful nod as he inserted himself into the conversation and he inclined his head in a submissive half-bow.
“If Mister Haradin would prefer,” Slade suggested, “He could join us for our advance on the headquarters building once we locate it.”
Arlo shot a look at Irina, who was already smiling back at him, and then looked at Slade with an expression like he was going to be sick and asked, “What exactly does that entail?”
Slade happily explained the usual scenario when retaking Church-conquered islands. “The cultists almost always set up in the town’s chapel so they can defile it at length, but sometimes they destroy it outright either due to expediency or because any present monks and Oathkeepers might prevent them from being able to take it. In that case, they will go for the town hall or the governor’s mansion.”
Here, Irina took over and exhaled a grand cloud of smoke before saying, “Our reports from Peppernuts did not indicate which they’d set up in, but all three are in a valley in the center of the island. Once we figure out which one they’re using, we just surround it and clear it out. Stormtroopers specialize in urban combat and trench warfare, so Slade and his men will make quick work of it.”
“Pardon me, Madame,” Slade interrupted with a grunt, pointing down to her cigarette, “But may I ask if you have another of those?”
Irina laughed. However long the two had been berthing together on the Ravenheart before Irina crossed over to the Dawnstorm, it was a surprise the man didn’t yet know that the Tribune never brought cigarettes of her own and instead chose to leech tobacco products off of others.
“Sorry, shipmate,” she reported amusedly, “I got this one off Bloody Stupid Johnson. You’ll have to tap him.”
“Whatever would we do without him?” laughed Slade, “Alright, thanks, mum.”
When the tall man was gone, Arlo felt the need to ask, “Bloody Stupid Johnson?”
Laughing again, Irina explained, “The oaf could kick down a vault door, drink a tavern dry, and still rape a giraffe to death after; but he’s dumb as sin. Only really fit for killing Her enemies, really.”
“I thought stormtroopers were supposed to be both strong and smart.” put in Arlo with a passing glance at the shape of the huge man offering a cigarette up to his commander.
“Well, in his defense,” Irina relayed, also considering the remote hulking form of the other stormtrooper, “His file says he came to us from the Holy Pioneers, who were shopping him out to all the special forces in hopes they could get rid of him because he kept trying to invent the dumbest, most horrible new devices to try and use in battle.”
Arlo watched the vacant eyes of the burly stormtrooper turn back to working on his gun and imagined the man to be a sort of cut-rate version of Master Balkan. Such creativity would not only be unwelcome in a martial setting, but probably unsafe as well. Not only that, but the man did (despite his apparent credentials) happen to look incredibly stupid. Arlo sighed through his nose.
“Bloody Stupid Johnson, it is.” he declared.
It was utter silence in the choppy water as the landing boats neared the beach. The only sound was the lapping waves and the whispering static of the wind touched by some far-off rumble of thunder. Ten men filled the back of the armored car, five on each side along benches bolted to the floor. The rear half of the car was like a coffin, armor covering the top in shade as it broadened to a low rear opening. The front was narrower, the shape of the vehicle coming to a narrow flat front with an open top, but all covered in heavy steel plating and rivets. The open top of the front half meant that Irina could slither up into the pintle turret with a pair of binoculars and peer over the fat water-tank shrouded barrel of her machine gun to the oncoming beach in hopes of seeing any kind of movement in the bunkers dug into the rock wall at the rear of the shore. In front of her, under the machine gun, the vehicle’s cab was like a squat, bulldog-nosed front with a huge triangular cow-catcher of armor stood-off in front of it. The gentle thrum of a methsel engine soon mingled with the crashing waves as part of the bizarrely silent soundscape, and after long examination, Irina descended back down into the rear compartment of the vehicle where Arlo sat on a jumpseat built into the lid of a supply chest between hanging belts of ammo.
The men of B Squad were seated calmly in the benches with a dangerous air, exuding the sense of a coiled spring ready to explode at any moment, yet extremely calm and controlled. Firm, cool eyes regarded Irina as she appeared and paced down the broadening compartment to go and hang out the rear of the armored car by a steel bar so she could survey the other armored cars on their landing boats as well. More landing boats full of marines and gun trucks were behind them, and as Irina had predicted the Dewdrop and Raincatcher had been sent in close with them to provide covering fire with their deck guns. The Tribune could not see the guns from her position, but she could imagine the thirteen year-old Midshipman Sally Gordon manning one with enough courage to put many grown men to shame.
As Irina ducked back into the compartment, one of the men had removed his helmet and was holding up a hand to her. When she looked questioningly down at him, he cleared his throat and reverently said, “Mum, I noticed you was a smoker.”
“I am.” Irina replied to him easily enough.
At this, the man produced a fat zeppelin of a cigar with a broad middle that came down to two narrow points. “These come from my home island of Carolyn. Every time I get attached to a Tribune, I offer them one when we go into battle, mum. It’s a good luck charm.”
“Is it?” Irina asked while taking the fat thing between thumb and forefinger. It was a little big for her taste, but the Tribune hadn’t met the fattie yet that she wouldn’t smoke. She grabbed the end of the nearest carbine and used its bayonet with no protest from its owner to slice off the ends of the cigar while the stormtrooper told her about it.
“I’ve offered one to every Tribune I’ve served under.” the soldier explained, “The two who turned it down are both now dead, I’m sorry to say, and we won the day every time they were smoking it as the battle started.”
Irina nodded. She did not put too much stock in good luck charms, but she did choose to believe they were real, and that they would have some small boost. If nothing else, it was good for morale. So, she struck up her lighter and polluted the back of the armored car. Another of the men spoke up, incredibly grateful that Irina was puffing the cigar to life even in the tight space, saying, “That seals it, Corbin. We’ve got the blood of a Great House in here, on top of the Charred, and now she’s smoking your stoagie. Treble-charged luck we got, shipmate.”
The man who’d presented the cigar nodded forcefully. “Treble-charged is right! Goddess be praised!”
Irina did not stub out the cigar, but she did cooly warn the men, “You lot had better still fight hard, though. A treble-shotted cannon is like to explode, innit? So let’s not get careless doing Her work.”
At this, most of the men drew crescents in front of themselves while Irina settled down with her rump resting on the bottom rung of the ladder that went up to her pintle gun. Arlo looked down at her puffing on the cigar and asked, “Are you ‘the Charred’?”
“Aye.” Irina answered. “In case you couldn’t tell by the scars, princeling.”
“Does that make you a good luck charm?” Arlo prodded next, looking as incredulous as he did over the fact that his own presence was supposedly some sort of good fortune.
Irina smirked back up at him and offered the stoagie while explaining, “Some folk in the Committee say I cannot be killed because I survived my appointed death, by Her grace. While I don’t necessarily agree, I don’t aim to prove them wrong if I can help it. It’s good for the men.”
Arlo took a few puffs on the fat cigar thoughtfully before passing it back down. The two sat in companionable silence for a long time after that. They had been quiet for so long that Arlo was startled when the first rattle of machine gun fire spake out like thunder over the water. With instant, mechanical alacrity Irina got to her feet with the cigar between her teeth and raised a crescent hand to the men. They cheered while she donned a pair of brass goggles and leather gauntlets before climbing to her pintle amid the sound of two thumping blasts from Dewdrop and Raincatcher answering the bunkers ashore. Irina raised her head over the top of the car and took the machine gun into her arms while she lowered herself onto the saddle behind it. Bright yellow tracers sliced a path from the water up towards the armored car in tall narrow pikepoint splashes, but Irina only lowered herself behind the facia of the pintle itself for the second they passed over her before peering through the open sights and turning the gun towards the open mouth of the nearest bunker.
The gun bounced and rattled in its mount while she fired, white flashes illuminating her face as she drew green tracers across the black slit that was pouring fire onto the armored cars. The sergeants of the other squads had by now sent their pig boys up into the cupola and they were firing alongside her, strings of green painting along the emplacements on the beach as the sand drew ever-nearer. Dewdrop spake once more, a loud thump that burst open the face of a bunker and was followed by a distant crackle from the munitions inside going up. Irina kept firing on her target until it stopped firing back before swiveling to another. She had only put a few rounds into it when Raincatcher’s deck gun sang out and managed to get a shot so perfectly inside that orange flames belched out the black slit. More machine guns opened fire while sand ground beneath the landing boats, this time coming down from above. Irina cursed and lowered herself, yanking back on the grip of her machine gun to express it as high as it would point, but found she could not sight the height of the precipice. Bullets ricocheted from the metal in front of and behind her as she dropped down the ladder into the compartment and found Arlo pressing himself against the forward bulkhead of the vehicle with wide eyes.
Their armored car sounded its horn while the boat lowered its front ramp and the whole world around them lurched while the massive vehicle charged forward into the battle. Irina took off her peaked cap and exchanged it for a helmet from Arlo’s supply chest before handing up another to him while the unsettling sound of gunfire plinked against the armor above and in front of them.
“No artillery yet!” Irina shouted around her cigar full of evident good will. “Lucky!”
Arlo looked at her with a frantic expression while they swayed as the truck crested some lump on the beach and said with much less cheer, “Lucky!”
They roared onto the beach and after a few moments approaching the shelter of the wall, the fire from above subsided. Irina rose up into the cupola once more to get a lay of the land and saw the other three armored cars had resumed firing at one bunker at the end of the strand. She couldn’t get an angle on it herself from their sidelong position, and didn’t dare signal the driver to bring them away from the wall and into the depression of the higher guns once more. An impact of a shot from Dewdrop’s deck gun on some target above her head sent dirt and rocks showering down from the rock wall, one even clacking on the visor of her helmet while Irina scouted the beach for movement. She was turned away to watch the marine’s landing when some shot that had been well-aimed for her head blew away the end of her cigar in a shower of orange sparks that she whipped around through to clutch the grip of her machine gun while ducking behind the armor plate again. More shots crowded below her, threatening her driver, so Irina started pulling the trigger before she rose up again depressing the screaming gun towards the new infantry that were pouring out of the entrance to the uphill road.
Men in red jumpsuits were fighting alongside what looked to be partitions of the local militia and even police officers with red armbands. Anger and hatred rather than fear poured into Irina’s heart while she cast a stream of fire into the desperate brave fools who had rushed ahead in a desperate bid to defend the approach to the upper defenses. With her teeth clenched around the flowered end of the ruined cigar, Irina squeezed the trigger and swiveled the gun across the entire group even as more and more soldiers poured into it like a deadly huddle, insensible to the volume of fire they were returning. Two more streams of fire joined hers, which was fortunate in part because some of her opponents had found cover behind the slope of the road and also because her gun shortly fell silent at the end of its ammo belt.
Growling, Irina dropped halfway down into the passenger cabin again and unceremoniously gave a kick to Arlo’s upper-back to get a surprised yelp out of the lad before spitting the remains of her cigar all over his scandalized and indignant face. Since he seemed unaware that he’d done anything wrong, she dropped the rest of the way down and grabbed one of the belts of ammo hanging next to him to hold it floppily in front of his shivering face. He looked absolutely wretched back at her under the brim of the too-heavy, too-large helmet with a single wet piece of cigar adhered to his right cheek.
“The end of this is going to be dangling by you, princeling,” she snapped, “You had better start the others in a daisy chain when I am up there firing. If the chain gets long enough to kink, you leave it alone except to unkink it. If it gets short enough to dangle, you add another belt. Understand? Understand!?”
Arlo nodded forcefully and instantly started the second belt on the chain while Irina turned to B Squad. The sergeant looked up at her patiently from the open back hatch waiting for her orders while he trained his gun against the rolling landscape outside.
“When they have no angle on you, take your men along the wall and secure those ruined bunkers. If there are any passages up, seal them with stickbombs.” she instructed, “Regroup at the foot of the hill with the others when you’re done.”
There was no verbal response, but the man held up a curved hand and Irina returned the gesture before taking the end of her ammo belt back into the cupola to weave it through the receiver behind the steaming barrel of her machine gun. When she peered over the top again, she saw that the other armored cars were not firing. With a deep, hollow thoom, another deck gun blasted the rock above them, but Irina kept her eyes ahead looking for movement among the bodies at the bottom of the hill.
The stormtroopers had disgorged from the other three armored cars by now, and Irina was pleased to see that Slade had the same instinct as her and was leading A Squad along the wall to secure the bunkers on the other side of the road. She panned her gun across them and then looked back towards the beach. The marines were running on foot, much to her chagrin, under sustained fire from the few remaining machine gun emplacements above while their gun trucks rolled out of the landing ships. Many of their own men were falling, some were finding cover in dips of the sand, but those were still firing what seemed to be useless shots to high-up targets they could not hit. Irina felt her blood almost boiling at the sight and turned back to the road while giving the driver the signal to advance with a kick against the bottom of her cupola.
As soon as they arrived at the foot of the hill, guns already turned to face up the incline, the armored cars were peppered with more fire that they returned in the same instant. Two tractors were bearing down at them from the top of the hill with chattering machine guns behind raised bulldozer plows. Irina growled and kicked the cupola even harder while she opened fire, aiming for the space beneath the bulldozer blade. The gunners of the tractors were aiming for the cabs of the armored car, so a storm of bullets ricocheted off the prow of the truck until thanks to Irina’s sustained fire one of the caterpillar treads snapped and the whole tractor slewed to one side, and hooked its blade into the other. As soon as she had a side-on view Irina opened fire on the exposed drivers’ seat, and the other three armored cars all joined her in rendering the operator into a pile of messy red meat. Two more shapes appeared over the top of the second tractor as its crew bailed, but they were instantly knocked off the top by further machine gun fire. Some ricochet in the mess had blown out one tractor’s magneto and the sparks had touched a jet of leaking methsel that now brought forth a jet of flames that engulfed both of the enemy vehicles.
There was no way the column of methrollers were getting through the narrow gap that remained any time soon.
Irina raised a fist into the air and kicked her cupola twice to signal a halt while she turned to see the gunners in the other armored cars cheering. She then turned the rest of the way to check on the marines rushing over the beach and was surprised to see that many of them were mounting the hill behind her. Stormtroopers who had been sheltering in the lee of the armored cars without reentering them were emerging now as well and moving up the hill and along the dirt walls to squeeze past the wreckage. Irina saw one man stand over a twitching cultist’s corpse and shoot down into it as he passed and nodded to herself in approval before descending down into the rear of her armored car once more. Arlo was down there alone, shaking hands joining belts together at the end. She patted the top of his helmet as she arrived and then reached down to pull him up next to her.
“I’m sorry!” he shouted as he scrambled to his feet, to her confusion, but she had to admit he didn’t seem to know what he was sorry for either.
“You’re doing good!” she shouted back, then raised herself onto her toes to give him a messy kiss and a light slap on the cheek before explaining, “That’s for luck, princeling. Come on, then, let’s go!”
“Go!?” Arlo yelped miserably. “Out there!?”
Irina smiled darkly up at him and unslung her carbine. “And beyond, shipmate! Draw that sword and pistol of yours! We have greencoats on the beach dying by the score!”
Surprisingly, not only to Irina but Arlo as well, the young man did as he was instructed. Irina felt joy and hope surging in her when she saw him looking down nervously at his weapons, so much so that she almost decided to kiss him again in earnest this time. Considering the definite flatness of his chest and his sorely lacking hip-to-waist ratio, she thought better of it and instead gripped her carbine in both hands before turning on her heel and charging out the back of the car with a triumphant, “In Her name!”
Arlo stumbled following her and tumbled down into the mud on his side, instinctively driving the tip of his sabre down ahead of him as he fell, and then scrambling to his feet. Marines were running past him, charging up the hillside to join the rapidly forming lines at the top of the hill where a gunfight was blasting away on either side with the cutout of the road as the only cover. By the time Arlo started moving his feet to join them, he found that Irina had already gone far ahead. His legs were so much longer than hers but he ran awkwardly with the flak jacket on and trudged up the hill almost like an armed toddler while marines in rigid armored vests poured past him on both sides. Without any sight of the Tribune, Arlo just joined in with the others and lurched toward the top of the hill after passing through the narrow gap alongside the burning tractors. At the top, he found it easy to get into the deeper cover of the cutout rather than finishing his ascent. Due to his height and the fact he had a pistol instead of a rifle, Arlo joined the press of men against the left side of the road but was able to peer over the top to see ruined emplacements and blown-apart sandbags. Dirt and smoke flew all around while he was jostled by the other marines easing themselves further up the incline, and Arlo held his pistol up to rest it flat in the grass with its hammer drawn back while he desperately sought out anything that looked like a real viable enemy.
In a shocking flash, something solid and fast sailed down at an angle and hit the ground in front of him before bouncing up to plunge across the top of his head and knock his helmet off while spraying his face with dirt and mud. Arlo yowled in pain and fell onto his back, and immediately two marines were over him. He felt their hands on his scalp, searching for a wound.
“I’m fine!” he shouted through his own hands while he dug at the dirt in his face, though he didn’t seem fine at all. His eyes felt scorched with grit and mud, and as he sat up he blinked uselessly and painfully, crying out again, “Water! I need water!”
Another man in the mass used his canteen to splash water onto Arlo’s face and when he regained his vision he saw that ahead of him men were piling over the top and out of cover even as other men were being dragged back into the cutout by marines and medics. Another glance back down the hill showed more marines coming in from the beach. Looking around more, Arlo saw that a steady rhythm had started to the battle with men mounting the wall to fire over the heads of the enemy and cover the advance of their comrades who were dashing ahead to find new cover. Less out of a desire to find the danger and more in an interest to be reunited with Irina just in case she really was some kind of good luck charm, Arlo found his sabre and revolver before rising to his feet and approaching the wall once more.
He had to get his whole head above the side before he could see the stormtroopers and marines ahead jumping one-by-one into a trench they’d just cleared under the guns of another trench ahead. In a bizarre display of overconfidence, the Khaldonites had not been prepared to defend from the top of the hill and many soldiers were hastily rearranging the defenses to bring their attention inwards while the machine gunners kept blasting away at the landing force crossing the sand below. Before Arlo’s very eyes, a shot from one of the transports’ deck guns directly struck a machine gun and a cone of dirt exploded backwards from the position with bodies and detritus tumbling away from it. A cheer rose from the trench that had just filled with men ahead and Arlo watched as the men leapt up to dash for the ruins of the trench that had just been destroyed while more men massed around him and to his right one even climbed up onto the grass and dirt to charge after them.
Arlo hesitated, looking at the men still around him, deafened by the shrill white noise of officers shouting orders, gunfire, screams of the wounded. The din of battle was all one shattering glass and thundering drum in both of his ears, so loud he could barely think to pull his head back into cover. When he saw Irina’s shape ahead, tiny compared to all the men around her but tall for the boarding axe she held over her head while waving the stormtroopers onto the breach behind her, Arlo stuffed what of his fear he could deep down inside himself and hauled his body onto the ground above him.
He started off on all fours with his weapons held tightly in fists that hammered over the ground, and then picked himself into something like a crouch. Only when Arlo stood and began to sprint with his heart beating in his chest did he see that the ground all around him was pocked with craters. This high place had been battered and softened for days by naval mortars and the great guns of the Dawnstorm so that this mire of trenches and machine guns were all that remained of what had once been a powerful army. Compared to the little gunship he and Irina had escaped on Hookthorn, there was a veritable city of Khaldon-worshippers for whom this plateau had become a graveyard before the first Imperial had even set foot on Redbrook.
Arlo chased after the soldiers he saw ahead until he saw them all drop again into yet another trench ahead. With them out of his way, he saw the mass of Khaldonites in the next trench setting up pikes to receive the charge they predicted. Arlo took a few more long, leaping strides at the trench between himself and the pikemen when he noticed that they had brought their machine gun around as well and were setting it up. A cultist in a police uniform took a few shots in Arlo’s direction with his pistol and Arlo immediately dove for the mud. He landed face first and crossed the sword and revolver over the top of his head as though they might protect him, then after a second thought on the situation set to working his elbows in front of him to drag himself towards the safety of the trench before the machine gun could open up and start churning the mud he was crawling through.
Ahead he saw something come out of the trench Irina and the stormtroopers had disappeared into. It looked like they were lobbing stones or bricks over the gap. Arlo continued madly writhing along in the mud even though he was not sure he was too excited to join a band of soldiers who’d been reduced to hurling sticks and stones. He was even more baffled to see it when, a few seconds later, the stormtroopers all began to appear rising out of the trench ahead but to the right of where he’d last seen them. He half-expected the machine gun to open up on them and had even formed his mouth into the shape it would need to shout a warning when a ragged string of explosions tore apart the next trench, the machine gunner, and the row of pikemen.
As soon as Arlo realized it was stick bombs the men had thrown, he jumped to his feet again and started sprinting once more in hopes to catch up with them while they descended with the falling dust and smoke into the trench they’d just bombed amid the muzzle flashes of their carbines. Arlo was fairly winded by this point, however, and found his energy to be somewhat lacking. Even through the racing adrenaline he could feel his ankles threatening to roll with every step while he shoved himself forward with a furious will to live. Casting a quick glance over his shoulder he could see other men running towards him, marines and stormtroopers alike. He could also see that if he had gone the other direction at the top of the hill he would’ve been embroiled in an even more deadly firefight, as the view from this position revealed trenchworks full of red and green uniforms knotted together in mad heaps. Upon turning forward again, Arlo found he had reached the intervening ditch and tried to leap over it. The toe of his right foot hooked on the corner of a broken barricade, however, and he found himself tumbling down into the mud again with his arms thrown out in front of him. Looking up, he saw Irina’s stormtroopers ducking away from gunfire that issued forth from an open-topped methroller full of men coming around the corner from the road the trenches had been built alongside-of.
Without thinking, Arlo pointed his revolver at the oncoming vehicle and squeezed the trigger without even looking down the sights. His finger crushed the trigger back over and over again, having to tug harder against the double-action weight of the trigger, and he emptied all six shots at the truck. He could not see if he had hit anybody or anything of the truck, but in the next moment it did not matter because the truck was blown apart by a shot from a recoilless rifle behind Arlo. He rolled onto his back while listening to the cheers of the stormtroopers in the trench and looked back towards the top of the hill. Some men had managed to move one of the tractors enough that one of the marine gun trucks was able to fit through the gap.
It came up the road towards them now with the long barrel on its turret bouncing gently while it turned to scan the trenches for any remaining machine gun emplacements. Arlo waited until it passed him by before getting to his feet and moving at a weak jog towards the trench his allies had last hopped into. When he slid down the inner face of the muddy gash to land amongst the stormtroopers, they all cheered and clapped him on the shoulders. Arlo had no energy to smile or greet them and just stood there panting until he thought to sheath his sabre and break open his revolver. He shoved a speedloader into the back of the thing and coughed, then dry heaved and sat on the ground. Someone handed him their canteen, and Arlo drank every drop inside it.
That’s when the whistling began.
All around him, stormtroopers started shouting, “Shells! Shells! Shelling!”
With no concept of what to do himself, Arlo looked around to see what the stormtroopers were doing so he could at least copy them. The ones that weren’t dashing to some deeper part of the trench were pressing themselves up against the wall. One man who had a bandaged leg was crawling into an overhanging wooden walkway. Another man simply paused his reloading of his carbine, drew a crescent in front of himself, and then went back to his work.
Thundercrash explosions sounded and washed away all other noise while huge jets of dirt and rock peeled up in torrents from the ground ahead.
After very little thought, Arlo decided to jog after the men who’d gone deeper into the trench with his revolver in hand. He rounded a corner and saw more stormtroopers disappearing into a doorway that seemed to lead underground. Arlo first thought to go towards them, but then saw another corner ahead where men were huddled against a wall. Briefly he sat in indecision and then there was a blast less than fifty paces behind him and the shaking ground told Arlo to just go forward no matter what. He stumbled at a mediocre pace towards the next corner and found himself bumping into the man called Bloody Stupid Johnson. Johnson looked down benevolently at Arlo and used a massive arm to pull the lad up against the wall and keep him pressed there. Johnson also noticed that Arlo had lost his helmet and sheltered him beneath his bicep while the shells fell. The explosions went off all around them with the ceaseless whistling whine of the mortar shells for so long that Arlo found himself in something like a trance.
Nothing seemed dangerous any longer. So much time had passed that he was no longer out of breath and though his heart was still pounding in his temples it was a much slower rate. He was not bored, and he did not dare move from beneath the protection of the huge man, but the fear of any sudden death transmuted now into a remote thing. Arlo somehow felt like he was viewing himself as a third party through a window. The endless noise and fury, the impossibility of hearing anything except whistling and harsh thrashing blasts, and the cold dirty mud of the trench were a stew of meaningless chaos that governed Arlo into a deep, self-reflective silence.
In that instant, he could only think of how he deeply regretted waiting so long to tell Moriah that he liked her.
When the shelling seemed to stop, Arlo looked around himself at the emerging men coming out from behind barricades and from undercrofts. Bloody Stupid Johnson released him and went on his way without a word, and Arlo stood there swaying slightly on unmoving feet in the corner of the trench while the stormtroopers left him behind. He stood there, eyes watering from his forgetting to blink, staring straight out over the top and at the craters and dust without any real drive for a long time. Fewer and fewer men passed him as time went on. No one spoke to him, no one bothered him. Something inside of Arlo told him to sit down and mutely he did so. Something else told him to put his gun down and once more he did. Numbness was washing over him, both physically and emotionally.
Finally his waning adrenaline ran dry and Arlo collapsed uncontrollably into a deep and inescapable unconsciousness.
