Amazon Apocalypse 5: Chapter 66

I killed the B-Grade leading these heretic forces swiftly. He came at me in a sudden rush of crimson energy. Tendrils emerged from his back, some buzzing like whirring saws, and others fired short bursts of laser fire. Crude missiles blasted from his back.

I walked through them all. The missiles suddenly lost track of me, and his wild strikes were elementary to wave through thanks to Instrument of Fate. While he passed by me in a whirring mass of destruction, I twisted, turned, and grabbed one of the cables stretching from the back of his head to his spine.

Curious, I tugged on the cable, unplugging it like any other device. A moment later, the heretic dropped out of the sky like a rock. And he landed about as gracefully.

I drifted down after and gave the mangled mass of flesh and wires a kick. When he didn’t move, I pulled on those sinister robes and revealed a thing more machine than human.

Exposed wire and circuitry ran along the heretic’s entire body, only roughly approximating a human form while wearing robes. Thanks to all the extra mechanical limbs, what I saw now better resembled a centipede than a man. Only the head remained to mark this thing as something that had once been humanoid.

The face was partially intact, though the lower half had been replaced by metal and a speaker. Behind it, his brain was on full display, protected only by a pane of glass. It was cracked from his fall and rapidly leaking fluid.

I weighed the merits of trying to fix him up to interrogate him but found the mere thought of working on such a messy piece of machinery revolting. So I lifted a boot and smashed down on the cracked glass, putting the heretic out of his misery.

After, I pulled out my summoning circle.

“You know the drill, Sharky,” I said as I waved at the heretics.

“Nom nom.” Sharky shoved his heaving bulk through the summoning circle and, with no further instruction, began single-handedly turning the tide against the enemy.

They shot him, stabbed him, cut him, but none of it mattered as one by one each of them vanished into Sharky’s insatiable belly.

Naturally, I helped out, which ended the battle even sooner. When all was said and done, I spotted one dirt-covered figure crawling out of a well-concealed hiding space beneath several bodies.

It was Legate Morin. From the looks of things, he’d survived the battle by hiding. I shook my head at the sight of him. What had been a look of terror moments ago was now a confident swagger.

He was B-Grade now, as far as I could tell. While he might not have been able to beat that heretic I’d just slain, he could have held him off and given his men a fighting chance. As it was, they would have all been slaughtered had I not happened upon their battlefield by chance. It seemed Morin was a coward and an idiot right until the end.

“Legate Carter! You have my thanks. Since you abandoned your post and have no rank at the moment, I’m drafting you to join my legion. You will be my personal bodyguard as we rally with the other legions in Mundwise.”

“Is that so?” I asked.

“Yes. Now hurry and get the men organized. I’ll give you this pin to mark you as my subordinate. I’m wounded, you see, and this wound must be tended to...” Morin gestured to a minor cut on his arm that was nothing more than a scrape. Meanwhile, many of his men nearby were missing arms and legs.

“You’re forgetting one thing, Morin. I’m not part of the legion anymore.”

“Huh?” Morin asked, suddenly frowning.

“I put up with you before because my role demanded it. I didn’t want to be a legate, but while I was, I held the position with honor and tried to help as best as I could. But there are no badges on my shoulders now.”

Morin seemed to sense something off about how I looked at him, and he began slowly backing away.

“Sharky, eat up.”

And then Sharky pounced.

While Sharky ate, I got the legion organized.

“Attention, one and all! Legate Morin fought bravely but fell in battle. We must all remember his sacrifice, but we have no time to mourn. He gave me this pin when I rejoined the legion, and now I’m in command of you all. I’m told we are all to rally in Mundwise with the other legions? Then follow me!”

I waved, and the legionnaires who could still walk picked themselves up and started moving. We left the dead and dying behind, while those few who could be saved were carried out on stretchers by what healthy fighting men remained.

***

In just a few hours, we reunited with the defenders of Mundwise, which contained the bulk of our surviving forces. Seeing the banners of the various legions flying along the walls of the nearby city filled me with nostalgia, though in truth it had only been a short few months.

The Nineteenth Legion was there, too, flying high along with all the others. Once, that had been my banner. Hopefully, Asimi and Myrina were taking good care of it.

Getting into a city under siege was easier said than done. The shields were up and in the middle of being bombarded by energy weapons from those alien ships overhead. I was pleased to note that the shields I’d worked so hard on enhancing weren’t having many problems shrugging off the attacks.

A distant red-headed figure waved to us from the city walls. I squinted, barely making out Cyra’s features from afar. She was beckoning us toward her.

I turned to the soldiers behind me.

“We can get into the city and rejoin the other legions from a much more defensible position, but only if we can fight our way to the walls. Shields up and prepare to charge!”

“AAAAHHH!” the legionaries screamed. There was a lot less eager bloodlust and a lot more terror in the scream than I was used to, but Legate Morin’s troops weren’t as green as I remembered and held formation throughout the entire charge. We plowed through a heretic encampment and made it through the walls, where I used the same emergency shutdown switch I’d installed before to temporarily open a hole in the defenses to let us through.

The physical gates swung open just a crack a moment later, and pretty soon, the thirteenth legion was safely inside Mundwise’s defenses.

Once we were safe, I took off the pin Legate Morin had given me just before he tragically died in battle and tossed it to the most competent of his remaining subordinates.

“You’re in charge of the thirteenth legion now. Take good care of it.”

Despite abdicating my unintended responsibilities, several legates greeted me upon my arrival. Cyra, I’d expected, but I was more surprised to see Legates Maximus and Thaddeaus. And accompanying them was Prince Herius, the leader of our entire expedition.

“The cavalry arrives!” Prince Herius remarked at my arrival.

I chuckled. “More like a small scouting party returning under fire. If I were the cavalry, I would have brought more men.”

Legate Thaddeus clapped me on the shoulder. “All the same, we are glad to have you.”

“Indeed. You are the most capable spellcaster in the legion, and we are in dire need of your help. You are no longer under my command, and I have no right to ask anything of you, but will you help us, Carter of the Dragon Lodge?” Prince Herius asked.

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

“These heretics will stand no chance against us once my father’s ritual is complete. When we are safely circling Glacia’s sun, the forces of Glacia can descend on this place in full and sweep the heretics away. But somehow, they are preventing the teleportation nodes my father gave me from synchronizing. Please help us. I would not plead if it were only my own life at stake, but this world currently houses the surviving populations of a hundred nearby worlds. Nearly five billion people dwell in pocket spaces brought to this place for safe transport, this city especially. Never in the Arcadia Multiverse has there been a world with so many lives on the line as today.”

The prince shot me a pleading and expectant expression.

“I’ll help,” I agreed. There really was no rejecting a request such as this in good conscience. "But first, I want to know the strategic situation. And where is Myrina? And if you’ve heard of Reluna or Mimiko, I’d like to know where they are as well."

Prince Herius pointed me toward Myrina. Reluna and Mimiko turned out to be there as well. Mimiko had taken the mystic realm, just as I’d told her. But she hadn’t gone running back to Crownhill as I’d wanted. And truthfully, that’s what I expected her to do. Cultivators tended to be very keen on preserving their own lives, after all.

Instead, Mimiko was here, standing side by side with Reluna and Myrina as they directed people from collapsing pocket realms into the much more stable space of the Sanctum Mystic Realm. I was touched, and I didn’t dare disturb them, considering the importance of their work. Getting caught in a collapsing pocket realm would no doubt be unpleasant for any who experienced it.

“Alright, tell me everything you know about this ritual you’re performing. Do you have a control device for it somewhere near here?” I asked.

Prince Herius nodded and took me to the estate he’d once shared with Lady Velicia. In the center of the meeting spot, we’d used all too often in this city lay a strange arcane device that looked a lot like a globe. Around the globe were dozens of little brass plates drifting around the planet in a complex but clearly deliberate pattern.

“All the array components are scattered across the planet, just as Father instructed. But they won’t sync up. Without that, he and his friends can’t retrieve the planet,” Prince Herius said, pacing nervously.

I frowned, examining the device and the mana flows going to and from it. It took me nearly a minute to put my finger on why it wasn’t working.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. The enemy is intentionally desynchronizing the mana flow between different array parts. My guess is they’ve got some sort of mana jamming system aboard several ships.”

“Praise the System! I feared I was the doom of all these people and had set the damn thing up wrong...” The prince wiped the sweat from his brow.

“So the good news is that it isn’t your fault. The bad news is that we’re going to have to take out those ships if we want to teleport out of here.”

The prince’s expression firmed. “Understood. Point me in the right direction, and I will strike down the enemy.”

The prince and I went to the walls, where we both scanned the horizon again, though only I could see what we were looking for. Eventually, I pointed out a dozen specific heretic ships, each with a jamming device on it.

“There are likely more out of sight. I don’t think we need to destroy them all, just enough that your teleportation device can activate. But there are likely others spread all across the planet.”

“The enemy will not stand against us!” Herius raised his hammer aloft and summoned the legates before repeating what I’d told him.

“Here are the targets,” I said, projecting a larger image of the planet with Lightscupltor’s Brush and highlighting all the ships we needed to destroy that I could see, which was most of them on this side of the planet after taking to the air and doing a little scouting.

“Sally forth and drive back the enemy! Fight without fear, for any who fall today shall live on in song and story for all time!”

After the Prince’s declaration of war, the elite among our forces dispersed. The bulk of the legion remained to guard Mundwise and all the civilians and refugees taking shelter there. Meanwhile, the rest of us departed on our mission.

I was surprised to note that the elite were essentially all our original legionaries. After a lengthy crusade, even the mistreated rank and file of the thirteenth legion were on par with the elite warriors from the first legion when we first arrived, though those that survived from the first legion were now the equivalent of our original legates.

In my absence and thanks to the huge number of refugees fleeing to this planet, Prince Herius had replenished our numbers with fresh recruits. Even with us sallying forth to fight the enemy, the walls would be guarded by forces a hundred thousand strong. And we might very well need those forces if this assault kept up.

***

Prince Herius arrived at our first target. Most of his people were taking out the nearby ships, but he and I were both nimble and powerful, so we would teleport to the other side of the planet and strike fast and hard on the jamming ships there.

We arrived at the first one, and Prince Herius swung his hammer to fling himself in the air, then descended downward like a human missile. Lighting flashed around him, and he struck the enemy space vessel like an angry god. He shot straight through the hull from top to bottom, and the whole thing swayed in the air as it struggled to stay airborne.

Unsatisfied with merely that level of destruction, the prince raised his hammer-staff high again, calling upon a storm from all directions. He charged again, this time striking the ship’s sputtering engine and smashing it to smithereens.

“I’d jump clear if I were you. That thing is going critical. It could explode at any moment!” I warned.

“Explode, you say? Thanks for the tip!” Prince Herius flashed me a grin as he ripped what was clearly some sort of fission reactor from the falling ship, tossed it in the air, and then swung.

His hammer head enlarged itself tenfold, and he struck the fission reactor like a batter striking a ball, hitting it straight into the side of another ship several miles downwind of us. The explosion I’d predicted came a moment later. It wasn’t as destructive as a bomb, but something had definitely gone supercritical when two ships collided.

While Herius took down two ships, I took a much more straightforward approach and bypassed the ship’s hull by cutting through the shadow realm. Once on the inside, I killed a few heretic technicians. From there, I cut power to the engines and let the ship flop down for a rocky landing.

The ship wouldn’t be flying anytime soon, but it would be repairable enough to claim as battlefield loot. I’d lost the last space shuttle I’d leased, so it would be smart to pick up a replacement. I didn’t want the Samhain Clan footing that bill without compensation.

“It seems their heretical designs are no match for your keen mind, brother-in-law!” Prince Herius clapped me on the back. “Onward! We only promised to take out six here, but it looks like the bulk of their forces are concentrated on Mundwise, and these ships are unprotected. If we destroy them all, things will be much easier for our brothers in arms on the other side of the planet.”

I nodded in agreement with him, and three destroyed ships soon turned to ten. Only a single B-Grade showed up, and Prince Herius turned him into a red smear on the ground without any help from me.

“There’s something I should tell you, Prince Herius. Something I told you before, but a lot was happening then. I think I know why the enemy is here and why they are focused on Mundwise. It may be my fault.” I had been hesitating on whether or not I wanted to point this out. If it had been any other legate, I would have kept silent, but Prince Herius was a brother to Cyra and Myrina. I didn’t want secrets like this in my family, even if they were extended family.

But Prince Herius waved me off. “I know, Carter. They are after your mighty pillar. In retrospect, I see now how Velicia lusted after it as well. I don’t blame you though, they would have come eventually anyway.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. He already knew. Perhaps Prince Herius was more clever than I gave him credit for.

“Besides, your secret pillar of yours belongs to you and my sisters, and they would surely curse me if they lost it!” Prince Herius laughed and took off for the next target.

I nodded along before frowning. “Wait, we’re talking about the System Planetary Hub, right? The one I looted. Not any other sort of phallic object?”

But Prince Herius was already fighting again and couldn’t hear me over the thunder of his own spells and the clash of his hammer against metal.

<Note>

I feel like it would be in character for Prince Herius to refer to his own dick as his 'Mighty Pillar.'

Though whether or not he was talking about that or the System Planetary Hub is up to you guys to figure out.