The Deian War: Conquest (18 page)

   The direct, piercing look in her doe eyes served to confuse him
about her fundamental nature, one that seemed to involve one paradox after another. It was as though there were two sides to her in everything she did, said and felt. Jestarr thought that perhaps she was this marvellously complicated because of the way her mind was organised, though he couldn’t hope to understand what that looked like.

   “Then we are free to join my brother and sister? Do you think they will be happy for me to come to them, Jestarr?” Solitaire
said.

   “How could they not be, my Grace?” he answered honestly. “You are their family, their kin. They should be honoured at your arrival.”

   Solitaire nodded, a serious gravity to the gesture that belied how innocent her words sounded. “Please, then, take me to them. I tire of the enemy out here; there’s no challenge anymore” she frowned.

  Jestarr acquiesced with a bow. He addressed the ship’s captain and gave the order to jump the fleet to Kraxus. In most legions, a Command
er and ship Captain could be considered equals. However, in the Harlequins, Solitaire held Jestarr in the highest esteem meaning that below her, he had unparalleled control of the legion.

He had always wondered at that fact, but perhaps it was because of the way he treated her.
Maybe there was a mutual level of care between them that he had yet to understand. It was certainly true that the other legionnaires, though they loved her dearly like him, could never act the way he did towards her and make her feel as safe as he could.

   Solitaire would never admit it, but privately she thought Jestarr was the only person that came close to understanding her, which made her both happy and a little sad; she thought she was a puzzle that could never be solved and the Commander might prove her wrong, but she thought
that understanding would come from her family, not from a Guardian.

   “When we get there, only I get to announce
it to them…” she insisted. Then, with a beam that Jestarr saw a hint of malice in, she explained “…because I have something special planned that must be done precisely as I say!”

   The 109th didn’t need her to be clearer, Jestarr least of all. They had come to
enjoy being surprised by her unspoken plans. Instead of asking about what she had in mind, he received the roll call of ships in the fleet and, when they all showed green to jump, only then began to try and guess what it was that Solitaire had in store for the enemy at Kraxus. He knew she wasn’t going to disappoint anyone. He knew, somehow, she was going to save the world that had been doomed to indefinite war.

AKUREI BROUGHT THE butt of her PR-5 up and smashed it into the paradigm’s face, knocking it backward before gunning it down and reloading. She was running low on ammunition and the rifle wasn’t even hers. She’d picked it up from a dead legionnaire in the midst of fighting, one whose name she felt guilty for not knowing. Her own gun was long lost in favour of her holo-blade as things got up-close and personal with the Phantoms, but she couldn’t deny the power of the firearm when she had room to use it.

   She almost had to wade through
the blood of the fallen, but it didn’t faze her. As a Guardian she had endured far worse. This was but one nightmare of many, many more that she had lived through. There would be thousands to come as well, but she would survive. She had to. Her duty demanded it.

   Akurei shot down a trio of paradigms that were trying to break into the door of a pillbox. Its heavy cannon, an AGG-II, was busy mowing down everything that came into its field of fire. She was amazed that the mounds of dead hadn’t completely blocked the gunners’ vision yet. It was impossible to say what would happen first; their own ammunition running dry, or their line of sight diminishing.

   “Commander!” she heard a loud voice call out. When she turned to find its source, she realised it had been her Apostle who now stood nearby, her fiery body attracting the mindless enemy like moths to their killer.

   “My Grace?” Akurei replied, throwing down her rifle as she used the last clip and pulling out her pistol. She moved nearer to Phoenix.

   “The Gore Prince…” Phoenix nodded towards the lumbering Phantom that was trying to climb across the battlefield, swatting friend and foe alike with its massive sword. Like the majority of the enemy, it was pulled towards the Apostle by merit of her volcanic brilliance.

   Akurei had noticed it long ago, but there was little she could do. The Warhound contingents had already opened fire on it and
she knew they were killing the creature slowly, even their vindictive shells seemed to be ineffective. “I’ve seen it, my Grace. The Warhounds will finish it before it reaches our lines”.

   Phoenix was busy battling a devii chieftain,
a match that was grossly in her favour. It seemed intent on crushing her with its hulking muscles, arrogantly unaware of what her skin would do to it if they touched. It amazed Akurei that when the Apostle struck back, the Phantom took so long to realise that its flesh was sloughing off its bones. She understood then that the enemy truly felt no pain, which could evidently be both a boon and a flaw.

   The Apostle blocked the chieftain’s axe as it sought to retaliate
and wrapped one hand around its neck. With the barest hint of effort, she intensified the heat in her grip to such an extreme that everything above its chest was vaporised. When she turned to Akurei, a calm expression on her face that belied the bodily destruction she had just caused, the Commander struggled to reconcile the act with such a beautiful being.

   “The Prince
survives because of what drives it” Phoenix explained. “Look to the rear of the enemy lines and you will see what we must kill to survive this battle”.

   Akurei didn’t have the sight that her Apostle did, so
it was harder for her to look past the sea of enemies that continued to assault the miles-long tertiary line. Seeing her difficulty, Phoenix pointed her towards the pillbox that she had helped to defend and gestured for the Commander to climb to its roof.

  
Akurei had to fight off yet more paradigms to get there, but she did it without regret. A golem appeared in the trench, crashing down into it after mauling a pair of legionnaires, but Phoenix obliterated it in a whirlwind of flame in support. Akurei pushed on, climbing over lifeless bodies to get to where she needed to be. She reached the ladder on the pillbox wall, gripped it with her black armoured gloves and began to ascend.

   The blood-specked rungs made her
slip on the first try, but she caught her foot on a secure hold and gripped more tightly. With a level of urgency that she was careful not to be mindful of, she hefted herself onto the roof of the bunker and looked out over the waves of Phantoms.

It didn’t offer an excellent view, but it gave her enough
height to be able to see over all but the largest of the enemy. She tried to ignore the other sights she could witness; dozens of legionnaires being slain, hundreds already decorating the dirt, the burning wrecks of tanks and the constant, every-encroaching horrors that sought to wipe the Guardians from the planet.

   Instead, Akurei looked at what awaite
d at the rear of the Phantom hordes. It was almost impossible not to notice from her vantage point, now that she had caught a glimpse of it. Everything about it seemed to pull her attention towards it and yet at the same time divert it away. It was like a blind spot that only took a blink to reveal again. She couldn’t name the Phantom that she saw, but she her gut told her it had everything to do with how the enemy had gotten this far.

   “
Do you see it now?” Phoenix asked her, joining her atop the pillbox.

   Akurei nodded. “What manner of beast is that?”

   “It’s evil - what more must we know?” Phoenix replied. “Contact the Dark Rangers. I want that thing taken out”.

OZ WAS TOO busy avenging his fallen to worry about the Phantom commander that the legions had started to notice. He was finding new and exciting ways to unleash his wrath on the enemy and only when Volanquis started fighting by his side again did he stop to think through the battle. They were far from losing, but nor did victory seem near.

   “My Lord, we cannot hold the line forever” Volanquis worried.

   “Such little faith you have, Vol” Oz replied. “I’ve never seen you so…anxious” he smirked.

   The Commander unlatched a gauss grenade from his belt, tossed it into a huddle of golems and watched as the majority perished under its atomising power. He smiled with satisfaction as a squad of legionnaires gunned down what remained of them. “It is my realism that gets the better of me, my Lord, not my fear”.

   Oz was about to reply with something witty, but was interrupted by a single, booming strike of thunder. Moments passed and it was followed by another, but the skies above were clear bar the plumes of exhaust from Guardian fighters that duelled with the enemy’s. Oz watched the enemy line as on the third strike, the Phantoms physically recoiled in perfect unison. The legionnaires were equally puzzled by the noise, but for a different reason.

   Where the Phantoms were confused because they couldn’t recognise the sound, which cut clear through the din of battle, the legionnaires were surprised because they could. The three booms had not been thunder strikes, but the discharge of pinpoint weapons fire. The distinctive mark of sniper rifles employed by a legion, the only one of its type
left, was alarming to hear.

   “The Dark Rangers…” Volanquis muttered, his voice conflicted with awe and uncertainty.

   The legion in question had rarely been seen on the field. They were specialised to take out single targets, not to engage in open warfare against thousands. With such a single task, the legion numbered no more than a hundred, but it was capable of eliminating high-profile targets when working in culmination. Each shot had actually been comprised of a dozen rounds, fired from as many legionnaires. The cumulative sound of their rifles had caused the combatants to notice it, but only the Guardians were able to take advantage of the confusion it caused.

  
After slaying a witless pair of devii, Oz recognised something now in the enemy that he hadn’t seen for months; disorientation. With a suddenness that could only relate to whatever the Dark Rangers had killed, the Phantoms lost all direction and devolved back to the chaotic beasts that the Guardians were used to seeing. Now, instead of charging the Guardians in overwhelming consistency, they charged in every way and even started to fight against one another.

   There was a convicted expression to Oz’s face that Volanquis hadn’t seen since
they first came to Kraxus. “Commander, pull back the legion and solidify the tertiary line. Reform the defences and stand ready for disciplined pulsar volleys, then order the artillery back to sporadic fire.”

   Volanquis reacted without hesitation, using the small freedom he had from the disorganised enemy to spread the Apostle’s orders. Less than ten minutes later, the legions were once more the main power on the battlefield. Balance was restored and the way of things was how it was meant to be again.

   With the Phantoms driven useless by the death of their highest chieftain, the legionnaires were able to enjoy massacring them like child’s play. It was strangely gratifying for the Guardians to cause such levels of death in the enemy’s place for once. Less than an hour later, the Phantoms had completely retreated beyond the city limits.

THE JUMP TO Kraxus took less than an hour. When they arrived, Jestarr saw the genius of Solitaire unravel and reveal itself from under her layers of fun and youth. There was a Guardian naval presence here already, but the stalemate that had been on the ground was mirrored in space. With the arrival of the 109th, the balance of power was tipped in the legions’ favour.

   “Fire flares,
all
of them” Solitaire commanded.

   Jestarr turned in doubt. “Everything, my Grace?” he asked.

   She closed her eyes when she answered, as if that would help bring clarity. “Yes! Use it all, expend
every
flare we have!” When she opened her eyes and saw his concern, she chuckled. “We’re at a world that forges millions of them! We can use all we want and never run out” she clapped her hands together in celebration of the fact.

   Jestarr felt foolish for having not understood her
logic sooner. He gave the order and the assembled fleet of the 109th fired their collection of flares. Moments later, a thousand blips appeared on their radar. Where only a few dozen were there before, now a blinding amount of icons registered on the Guardians’ sensors. They knew which were artificial and could eliminate them from their screens, but the Phantoms’ radar worked by heat alone. They would never be able to determine what was real and what was fake.

   “Annihilate them” Solitaire
instructed, leaning forward to view the holographic depiction of the unfolding battle. Her voice had a doom to it that made the hairs on the back of Jestarr’s neck rise. Nonetheless, he felt more inspired than ever and before he knew it, he was helping the captains of the fleet to wipe out the Phantom vessels surrounding Kraxus.

   The legions that had been present before their arrival were grateful for their assistance, but Solitaire was only interested in hearing the thanks of her brother and sister on the world below. When attempts to communicate with them failed, she resolved to take a drop-ship down to the surface. Jestarr didn’t think to argue with her. As far as he was concerned, the Apostle had every right to do whatever she pleased.