1 #3
He counted a dozen breaths, slow and deep, then a dozen more.
The terror fell away, and he felt himself again.
He worked to focus on his role … not as the frightened refugee, but as a Gatekeeper …
calm and dispassionate. He might not be a full participant, but given the risk was also not merely an observer.
Steady. Calm. Observe. Study. Detach. There were things to be learned from this fight, things he would not discover any other way.
He pushed the fear down, pushed the memories down, and struggled to see.
Really see. Study the Predators. Look for patterns.
He glanced again at the tree line. The other Big Predators knew the distance to the walls.
Knew it. They stayed just out of range of their furthest weapons.
An animal can be taught to avoid an area through punishment.
General wisdom said the Monsters could be ‘taught’ if you hurt one enough.
He’d never paid this much attention to the Predators themselves before …
they were not his specialty, Gates and Machinas were.
The king reminded him all the time to stick to what he knew.
Still, he had seen enough to know that watching through remotes in the King’s Tower meant keeping the focus on the ones attacking, and working to show a calm exterior.
The others expected calm, clear counsel from the Lord Gatekeeper.
Who else could offer the king reasoned and wise counsel even as the city came under attack?
It had never occurred to him to observe the ones further away, just as the other Predators seemed to be studying how this one attacked.
He felt a fist clench in his belly at that thought.
He reached for language to steady and calm himself.
The … the Polycephalus stressed their defenses all by itself.
Reinforcing squads from the city reserve trickled onto the wall to support the wall guards and Machina as the first-defenders ran through their ordnance at a ferocious clip.
Haldeen watched the Monster for a time and grew increasingly aware that the damage to its flanks seemed mostly superficial.
The copper shot furnaces, their newest and heaviest weapons, had left still-smoking holes in its side and done some damage, but not enough to make it turn away.
The defenders’ show looked impressive, but to his eye, appeared to accomplish little more than turning the hard-gleaned resources of the city into smoke and noise.
He watched as the fire slackened as firelances ran low and casualties mounted.
The city’s reinforcements hadn’t yet appeared in enough numbers to make up the difference.
Lord Haldeen saw that the squads’ shots might not injure the thing, but they caused the creature to pause to respond, and so bought time for the defenses to shore up.
Their actions, and their casualties, bought crucial minutes for the main defenses.
The Machina took time to cycle-up and arm after each shot, and a bit more time for their Manipulator to bring them into play.
The dozen-odd nearest Haldeen on the wall came to be reinforced as more Machina left their sheds or came tromping along the walls from other sectors.
In time, the Machina were fully deployed along the wall, precisely spaced, cycling down the firelances to deliver stored magic to their main weapons.
Two fired ranging shots, and Haldeen watched the rest make minute shifts.
Then, all twenty unloaded, firing in volleys of four at a time.
Haldeen put his hand up in front of his eyes to block the brightness as the superheated copper launched from each Machina to strike the Predator.
The Manipulator quickly set a sustained pattern.
Each Machina released a moment after the one before, as synchronized as a metronome, and driving fire into a few key points.
The first Manipulator to work still managed a dozen or so Machina, though often one would stutter and stop as he struggled to maintain control over the entire group.
The Manipulator had selected two leg-pairs close to him, and near the joining where several of the heads came together.
He ripple-fired his Machina, lashing the targets with molten copper.
Each Machina took precious seconds to heat its furnace, launch its projectile, and cool, but the steady boom-crack of launch and impact carried its own rhythm.
He watched, fascinated, as the Manipulator worked, teams of three Machina firing in identical patterns on the same rhythm.
One, four, three, two … beat, beat, beat, the shots coordinated across the firing groups with each group concentrating on a single point.
The other Manipulators eventually grasped what the first was doing, and soon, a core of machines concentrated their fire on the same target.
Smoke rose from the monster’s sides in greater volume, enough that it had to interfere with the Manipulators’ aim, but the streams of molten copper continued.
Haldeen hadn’t been counting the weapons’ launches.
He knew the Machina carried a finite supply of seed metal, and the weapon furnaces were absolute beasts to power, but they were a joy to watch in action. This was working, at last. He smiled.
He loved these things. He had designed these Machina based on the hard lessons learned in the fall of his own beloved city. Others had created the furnaces. Master craftsmen had turned his plans into reality, and the construction had been the work of the skilled hands of titanium-crafters.
The Machina looked like headless, humpbacked giants.
He’d designed them to be bipedal to simplify maneuvering around the city, and equipped them with arms that carried firelances and stabilized the Machina when their main weapons, the copper shot furnaces, went into action.
They could also act as grappler/cutters when they ran out of ammunition. Which hopefully would not be soon ….
The debacle at the World Gate left Machina in short supply.
So much resource lost! But, the Kings had no choice; butter went scant when weapons were required; it went scanter when virtually all the farms outside the city walls were lost,
and the only meat that came in was from raiding parties of expendable hunters who stalked and killed the little Predators that prowled the bases of those walls.
The priority had to be on more Machina for the walls, more to hold off the Predators.
Still, he liked to think that his designs were better than those of other Great Workers.
He liked to think that. But if I am going to be honest …
I don’t actually know if it was inferior design that failed the other cities, or just overwhelming odds.
He suspected it had been a bit of poor design and a lot of numbers.
His vantage in the tower let him look along the city wall for a considerable distance.
He saw that the commanders in the adjacent wall sectors had released groups of their Machina to support, aid, and replace the ones in combat as they became depleted.
He saw it added risk to the rest of the wall, but the fight was here right now.
He looked out at the Predators outside the wall.
They hadn’t moved, and there was no sign that the other Predators were going to join the one attacking or attack a different section of wall.
That was a relief. A most profound relief. At least this time they might be intelligent enough to stand back out of range, but they were not intelligent enough to figure out that if two or more big ones attacked at other spots on the walls, then sooner or later the elves would run out of defenses.
He looked up to where the two Big Ones loitered in the distance, well back from the tree line, and each moving through the forest like an auto-dozer.
If even one attacked them now, the depleted sectors would be hard-pressed to hold.
One breach of the walls, one crack in the dam, and the problem would instantly stop being the Big Ones …
it would then become the thousands of little ones that would swarm the city.
Veridian would fall, as had Aubergine before it.
He felt his hard-earned detachment waver, and felt himself spinning down that hole again. Breathe. Focus. Focus.
One Machina began to move erratically. He watched in horror as it staggered a few steps out of formation to the side. He watched the Manipulator emerge from the low tower on the battlement, trying to safe the weapons, locking them to a neutral position.
Aghast… he cried out. “Get out!” even though there wasn’t a chance that anyone would hear him.
The Machina detonated. He ducked down behind the thin balcony rail as it sprayed molten copper across the top of the battlements and into the packed squads.
The screams and shrieks of the injured and the dying cut through the other battle sounds.
The entire battery of Machina slackened, as the controlling mind failed.
They went silent for what felt like an eternity, until they began firing again, in ones and twos, as other Manipulators took up station and assumed control.
The volume grew again, but more disjointed, and not to its previous levels.
“This can’t continue,” he said out loud. “Something has to give.”
The hammering continued for perhaps another minute, before the pressure against the wall seemed to ease.
The angry swirls of the city’s shield eased as the pressure against them dropped.
It was obvious from his vantage that the Predator was shifting away, moving its bulk with a surprising speed over the ground as it moved in the direction of the still-functioning Machina.
He studied the damage as it moved towards the others.
One leg appeared broken, and another injured.
One head slumped at an odd angle compared to the others, while a second appeared out of action from the spear throwers.
The Monster’s side held smoking rents, and he could see the still-molten copper in the wounds on its side.
It appeared much less damaged on the whole though than the noise and thunder suggested.
The Machina nearest to where it moved, shifted slightly, its Manipulator adjusting it to fire.
The Predator brought up all the remaining heads, focusing them for what looked to Haldeen as a single concentrated attack.
Another sound entered from his right. He heard the high-pitched whine of the city’s four training Skydancers, finally joining the fight.
Each carried one of the city’s precious, and few, heavy ordnance.