157. The Showdown (3)
The giant pressed ahead, and the sacred dome faltered, its light flickering, but the prayers remained strong and resisted the Freeze. The Paladins stood on the flanks, controlling the tide and preventing the front of the hill from being pincered, whereas the vanguard became a kill box.
That flow was maintained by the base's great firepower, but supplies weren't endless, and the injured weren't being efficiently retrieved to the backlines.
The worst crisis was the lack of medicine supplies, let alone super-medicine. Every soul was precious; every soldier meant an extra rate of fire. Even the two Paladins understood that this was a defense battle, not a mission they would normally participate in, and the infant Solarium they were fighting for had no more than 2,000 citizens at that moment.
Stopping the Jotnar meant everything, and so they spent their all, no price too great for the sake of the grand goal. Adam Clay, Captain-at-Arms of the Legio Bellarium, stood watching the battle, radio transmitter in hand, his voice the only guidance the troops needed to survive this grinding battle.
The Children of Jotnar charged in wave after wave; their rage was their conviction, their minds overwritten by whatever malice their masters planted into them. They kept charging the endless broken terrain, reshaped by the endless bounding of artillery.
Each wave was composed of hundreds of Neanders, yet the Men-at-Arms retaliated with endless volleys of Blazer bolts. Downhill, a Bigfoot and a few Neanders got behind a boulder and started rolling it uphill, their allies coordinating from the back with volleys of stones and crude weapons as cover fire.
As he watched, Adam found himself grinning, despite all the destruction and casualties. He saw something in that desperate attempt to push forward against his forces: the pressure those creatures were operating under, and the jarring imbalance between command and strategy.
After months of surviving by the skin of his teeth, he seemed to have truly grown into the Commander his summons kept yapping about, and he could tell that the enemy wasn't all that scary after all.
Sure, they are powerful; sure, they wield sorcery; and sure, they have an undefeatable variant called the True Jotnar standing in the back like some sort of harbinger of doom. However, Adam was now sure of victory.
He could see it, feel it in his grasp.
The Lesser Jotnar that were using tools such as crude weapons and boulder shields weren't simply trying to get better at fighting his army; no, they were admitting that their brute strength was not enough, that their sorcery was not working.
In Jotnar logic, this was regression: reliance on tools, quivering against the strength of the things they sought to capture and reform into their image.
This was it, and Adam knew it: they were fighting against their own ideology, and their Commander was losing control.
But there was another problem: that Commander was a giant wrapped in a literal frost storm. It wasn't something that could be defeated by a couple of Paladins, and once it became sure its forces were no longer able to fight, it would step in and wreak absolute havoc.
Adam was relying on that—not too early, though, not too late either.
"Adam! Adam! We've got signal!"
Behind him, Megan climbed the rampart and came running. In her hand was a view from her LEECH, her wristwatch mobile terminal.
Adam immediately shifted his focus to her and looked into the terminal view, hearing the message he had been waiting for.
> MESSAGE (WILLS, AJAX) — [ This is Strike Force Ajax: Team Alpha. We reached LZ in Montreal. Bombs are armed. Target in sight.]
Adam looked at Megan with a grin and realized that this was it: the moment of truth, half an hour before dawn.
If their gamble was successful and what they learned from the Direwolf Rift was correct, their victory was nothing but one big bang away.
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When someone says "Rift in Reality," they would usually conjure the image of one place appearing in a totally different place through a crack in time and space, making it look like some sort of gate or a passage. But as Adam drove his Warwolf near the Rift, he understood that it was anything but.
The Rift in reality was there, albeit it wasn't showing a place beyond this one; it was showing nothing. In fact, Adam felt he was driving through heavy mist, with his headlights barely giving any visibility, sending a feeling of something fundamentally changing in his core.
Left and Right were no longer Left or Right; they changed as if they became up and down or something. He wasn't sure how to describe it, but something fundamental had changed, and that something was now fixed back in place, but in a way that was completely wrong.
That feeling made seasickness feel like a joke, but as everyone got their bearings, it faded away almost as the view around them changed.
Forest—that was the first thing they saw. Not a wintry forest, but rather a heavy pine forest in a cloudy season, the temperature becoming warmer almost instantly. But that scenery and feeling only lasted for a little while.
"Team Alpha, in position."
"Team Bravo, in position."
Two radio calls came to Adam's headset as he looked into the simple controls of his walker craft, which was currently in driving mode. Those two were Ajax and Elena, confirming they were ready, and so Adam replied in kind:
"Team Lupin, in position. Captain Creed, comms check."
"This is Paladin Creed. I shall commence operation," Creed replied, announcing the start of the action.
"Alright, everyone, try to keep up with the Paladin. Fire Teams Alpha and Bravo are to support the Paladin if deemed necessary. Team Lupin has artillery, so please exploit that."
In classic Wartopia RTS fashion, the Paladin would run around to clear objectives while the player-controlled units would run around, provide fire support against tough units, and try to keep the Paladin(s) alive for as long as possible.
In this case, however, Adam had a bit of control over Creed in the form of communication and coordination.
Captain Creed was armed with his iconic Solar Blade and Plasma Gun, which he had from day one, since Adam was finally able to produce the right ammunition type for them. But his power armor was degraded due to using steel plates rather than Solymer, which was still in its early phases of production. For that, Adam suggested that Creed shouldn't engage first before his artillery units took a crack at them. That's why Adam's composition of troops relied on Task Force Ajax and the Trench Dogs acting as scouts and supporting firepower, while his own squad acted as artillery support, leaving the vanguard to Creed, who was quite excellent in melee.
But what was rather critical were the other technicalities they needed to assess, and the experimentation they needed to get going.
The first thing Adam's squad did was to install a portable Scanner Beacon they made on the fly before powering it with a thick power cord that was successfully extended from the outside of the Rift to the inside without any anomaly, like the Freeze, interfering with it. The Scanner Beacon sent direct data to the small terminal in the Warwolf's cockpit, and Adam started seeing the terrain layout and enemy signals.
Without sending signals to the other squads, Adam flipped a switch and changed the Warwolf's controls from Driving mode to Mech mode, sending power to the limbs and dropping the tracks from the frame. The wolf mech came to life and stood on all fours, then lowered its rear, aiming the bombard on its back upward.
The environment around looked like they were simply in an American pine forest in late winter or early spring. However, past that familiar point, there was bizarre terrain where many monsters were detected, and Adam wanted to have the first fight on familiar ground. So, the way he positioned the Warwolf was meant for using the bombard on its back for actual bombardment.
The Warwolf, however, had no ammunition chamber, and all the bombardment shells were loaded on hovercrafts driven by the squad following him. Immediately, that squad, led by Corporal Wrench and other Lunar Engineers, reached for the Warwolf's large frame from the back and started loading shells into the loading bay, which automatically fed into the firing chamber. Adam decided that five highly explosive shells would be enough as a housewarming gift for the Direwolves gathered half a mile away from his position.
Five consecutive BOOMS sounded one after the other, followed by five impactful CRACKS in the center of and around the Direwolf pack. The loud firing noise made it clear that the entire pack and the surrounding ones were alerted to the attackers' position, which Adam was relying on to make the fight easier. He also earned an experience point from the bombardment just now, which made him tighten his fists with anticipation.
His cockpit was a safe place for him; his seat was more comfortable than the insides of the golem, and he had one screen to tell him what was going on just by his vocal commands. The controls were simple: two mechanical arms attached to his left and right, with many switches and buttons all over them. He could remain in quadruple mode, go to bipedal mode, or return to vehicle mode by retrieving the tracks for a more compact riding experience. However, he needed elevation and speed, and as Kave stated:
"Man, these things move too slow."
"It is not a proper Mech anyway," Adam replied through comms. "It's basically a construction walker craft with a few weapon systems fixed on it."
"Then what's so special about it?" Kave asked back.
"According to Captain Creed, the environment in a Rift can be navigated by regular wheeled vehicles. Something about places that defy physics and all that. If not for that, we would be driving our Bugs all over," Adam replied.
As the two chatted over the radio, the operators on the two flanks sent their drones into the sky, which had the oddest shapes of clouds and star systems.
"We're like in a different world, huh?" Kave spoke, looking up at the sky, then back at the Rift entrance, which looked like a big unmoving cloud.
"One that is actively waging war on ours," Adam replied, refusing to take in the marvels of the world that devastated his own.
Seeing as Adam and Kave were chatting freely, Elena shouted at everyone, including Kave and indirectly at Adam, just to rile them up for combat: "Enough chit-chat and get into position, Corporal! This is the day you make your ancestors think their sperm was well worth the investment."
The teams set up their deployable barriers, traps, and explosive mines. Adam watched and had his squad set up their mortar batteries as well as their defensive deployments.
As for his own preparations, he let go of the control handles and hovered his hand over the screen, giving the machine a verbal command: "Get ready for override."
> MANUAL CONTROL — TRUE
> PUPPETEERING FLUID — INJECTING
> PISTONS STATUS — PRISTINE
> REPORT — INJECTING PUPPETEERING FLUID COMPLETED
Following that final report, Adam watched as a tide of dire wolves jumped off the trees, charging on all fours at the rude creatures that invaded their territory and the mockery of a wolf that they had brought with them.
Right before they engaged, however, a powerful impact shocked the middle of their horde, and many of them perished on impact. Captain Creed appeared in a dust of smoke, charging left and right with the rest, slicing and dicing any poor wolf on his way.
The red volley of Blazer fire followed afterwards, and the two squads unleashed their own weapons away from Creed to thin the numbers on the sides and prevent their group from being cornered, whereas the rear squad started firing explosive mortar shells over the distance, thinning the larger numbers in the far distance that had yet to join the fight.
Adam watched and calculated the time when the number of wolves would be the highest before stepping in and giving another verbal command to his walker craft.
"ARISE!"
Right then and there, steam started hissing through various pressure outlets all over the Warwolf's frame, and the machine started moving and balancing itself as if a creature had come to life. The control handles and the screen retreated, leaving Adam a clear view of the mech he was now controlling through the flux fluids taking the shape of a puppet via its hydraulic pistons.
With an entirely new array of controls, Adam thought of the movement the Warwolf should make, and without delay or latency, the construct reacted, carrying itself with the speed and grace of a wolf, jumping over the deployed barriers and striding on all fours into the fray.
The dire wolves were clearly alarmed by the appearance of something this dangerous, and their understanding of its physique discouraged them from facing it head-on. Instead, they tried jumping on its sides and biting off its legs, but the battle of steel vs. teeth wasn't something the supernatural properties of those creatures were going to easily bypass. The Warwolf's claws tore through any flesh as it simply moved, and before it could reach its target location, yet another experience point notification popped into Adam's view.
Still, Adam's goal was far greater than simple experience points earned from yet another creative way to kill creatures far too weak to be a threat to him. His real aim was to dominate and annihilate, and he had the perfect tools for that.
After positioning the Warwolf not too far from Elena's squad, the walker lowered its stance. But its side blazers started to whirl like crazy, their muzzles glowing red as the weapons came to life, then with a sound so terrible that it made even the Paladin stop fighting and look.
BRRRRRRRRRRT!
Almost one second passed, and around a hundred bolts were released from the twin cannons into the charging wolf pack that numbered in the hundreds. But that firing lasted for more than one second; it lasted over twenty seconds as Adam made the Warwolf rotate slowly around itself, its red bolts mowing through the wolves, the trees, and the environment beyond.
In a single sweep, Adam almost annihilated everything on his own, and whatever survived of this unfortunate pack was now on the run, completely in the opposite direction.
≪ You have gained 3 EXP! ≫
Even as a prototype, Adam's original mech design, the Warwolf (named after the largest siege engine in the Middle Ages), proved to be something that even his summons from a grimdark universe could only watch with heavy breathing.
On the other hand, Adam had a lot of things to test, whether regarding his war machine or the Rift gate, fulfilling his promise to unleash hell upon the entities that devastated his world.
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