Two

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Seventh day of the seventh month, year 110560 of the imperial calendar (Junuary 4th 2153).

Citadel of the ancient ones.

Megas Strategos Belanor Chaesalor currently was listening the latest reports of the operations from the mouth of the telepaths inside an ancient one barrack repurposed as his command center.

Almost everything was proceeding as planned. The activation of the this gate of the ancient ones proceeded without incidents, that was natural, in the past 100,000 years the art to open the portals has become an extremely honed skill of the great guild of magicians of the great elven Empire born after the disappearance of ancient ones, the mysterious race that enslaved his own kind as menials servants and whose legacy by right belonged to the elves accordingly with the divine triumvirate, and whom was him, a simple servant of the will of them to question their will?

But he has to be quick, there were necessary a large number of Celezite to recharge the magical capacitors in each gate of the old ones, thus the portal wouldn’t be open indefinitely, just a few paltry centuries.

And that is why his mission was the same of every other Megas Strategos in charge a great world harvest.  Conquer the world at the other side of the portal, enslave the population and plunder as much resources and as many slaves as they could if there were a sentient race suitable for such purposes, if the world proved to be quite rich, just like they have done with this world and hundreds several times.

Chaesalor reflected, he didn’t like to be assigned to this world, the past times it was harvested almost of all the gold and other useful resources have already been taken, and the inhabitants, the last expedition 10,000 years ago only found a bunch of bald apes with stone tools. They didn’t even have magic just like their small spherical world and were very physically weak. He would rather be in command of the expedition planned in two millennia to the Orc’s plane, it was large and plentiful with endless resources and the orcs while dumb were perfect slave labor to work the farms and in the industries of the Empire.

But this world? He would have to scavenge the scraps left by previous expeditions, it was a loss of time in his opinion, not that he would openly say it before the triumvirate or the ruling councilors.

But even then, there has been something wrong since he made landfall in this world.

The natives were already here, with strange contraptions, like the weird flying automatons the natives had been flying over the ancient one citadel when his troops first entered this world and their metal ships in which some managed to escape his forces.

And that worried him to no end. The magicians in his staff were lost about what half of the materials presents in the automaton destroyed by his wyvern and was weirder, they couldn’t identify any kind of enchanting behind the automaton.

Worries that only grew in the past hours when from the sea, larger, bigger and armed automatons engaged his dragons. And their weapons of chice were rockets, but unlike the fireworks used in festivities and ceremonies those fired from the strange automatons flew from under their flapless wings, rockets that without any explanation chased the dragons relentlessly as if they had will by their own and then exploded upon impact.

No even the golems created by the most skilled magicians could take such intelligent decisions. And the complete inability of the magicians to cast a spell to keep those rockets from chasing the dragons already have taken a great tool in their numbers, with losses mounting and without a single of those damnable automatons being shot down but his scouts had found their origin, two large metallic ships, almost as big as the great dragon carriers of the Empire.

In the previous harvesting the natives had nothing like that and as they were effectively magicless they shouldn’t be capable of obtaining such advance weapons, and that left him in a dangerous position. The divination pulse emitted several day ago revealed nothing of this. The reason to him was painfully obvious. The divination pulse revealed advanced magic only, which was supposed to be the natural way to develop an advanced civilization, that has been always the case with all the worlds explored and exploited but now, here in the table before him was the proof that it was no longer the case.

And that derailed the plans casted centuries ago and confirmed by the pulse, made to keep the effectiveness of the army sent while keeping costs low. The weapons and soldier he had brought him were completely inadequate to the task he had in front.

Beast from the elven world and plenty of others, plus old surplus weapons and some infantry. The plan relying on the use of the brute force of the beast and moderately advanced weapons to beat the bald apes into submission in past expeditions, but that plan out of the table and he couldn’t just retire, after all the apes were already investigating the citadel and could try to attack themselves the other side while more adequate forces were reunited.

Chaesalor sighed and raised his gaze from the automaton in front of him to the figure across the room, old barracks of the ancient ones repurposed as his command centers, Strategos Nabeora Heixisys, the elf in charge of his aerial assets.

She was as loyal as she was ruthless but now was funning, screaming at some of the telepaths in the communication station, berating some minor Katepano about the grievous losses of elven lives and dragons.

‘What the hell do you mean that a light beam killed half of your wing?’

Heixisys could see the telepath flinch at the scream even if he wasn’t the target of the scream but he managed to do his job, after a few moment’s the answer came.

‘Katepano Elaleth says that he had no other word to describe what he saw. His wing and other wings attacking the automaton carrier were engaged by the automatons but using their superiority in numbers he and few others managed to get close to the ships to attack them and then they were the objective of slug throwers and beams of light.’

‘And how in the name of the triumvirate can light kill a dragon and its rider Katepano?!’

With trembling in his voice the telepath replied after several seconds.

‘The captain says he doesn’t know, just like an intense red beam of light was shot out of some weird mirrors on the deck of the ships and caused horrendous burns in the exposed flesh of his riders and dragons, carbonizing the meat all the way to the bone.’

Heixisys wanted to scream, go to the landing site of his 10 legions of dragons and wyverns and lash the Katepano and all her officers making such ridiculous claims. Light killing his dragons? She knew that some magicians used lenses and magic to burn things with concentrated light, but hose devices were large, delicate and clunky. There was no way that these magicless

‘Strategos Heixisys can you come here?’

Heixisys heard the voice of his commanding officer. Megas Strategos Chaesalor.

‘Yes my lord.’

She got to the table were one of the small automatons was, the most intact recovered by their forces and which Chaesalor has been inspecting for hours with a meditative expression.

‘Do you need anything my lord?’

‘What do you make out of this thing Heixisys?’

Heixisys meditated, while looking at the automaton. It wasn’t like those that were slaughtering her dragons but just as alien like those or the ships out in the gulf from where they were being launched.

‘This is like anything we have seen before, something that not even the best magicians that we have brought can comprehend.’

‘True, but there is something more profound implicated in this.’

‘I fail to see what that could, unless that this will make our task more complicated.’

Chaesalor sighed, she was ruthless and loyal but too prone to rely on brute force, both physical and magical, to accomplish her goals. He didn’t blamed her for that, in the more than 100,000 years of existence of the Empire that has worked out fantastically against different races but this time that would work against them, especially with the completely inadequate troops and tools they had with them.

‘Not only that Heixisys. What we have is completely inadequate, useless against what these apes have created. How many dragons and wyverns have your forces lost?’

‘500’

‘And how many of those automatons have you manage to shot down?’

‘1’

‘That is what I mean, if their land forces are anything like those automatons we will lost elves and beasts without causing any lasting damage.’

‘But our shields work against their weapons.’

‘Didn’t you berate that poor Katepano because the beams of light burned his riders ignoring their shields completely?’

‘Well yes, but their slug throwers are being blocked, we only need to add more Celezite to boost the natural mana of the dragons to reinforce the shields.’

‘That would only make them heavier and easier to target for their automatons.’

‘But last long enough to close in and burn those ships in a mass attack.’

Chaeselor blinked, she really liked to brute force everything but even if this new tactic might cost them many troops it had its merits.

The reports from the surviving riders reported only a bunch of those slug throwers and beams in each ship, swarming them could work.

‘Ok Heixisys, just make it a night raid, the records show that these apes can’t see in the dark like us, but remember, these automatons. ’Said Chaeselor pointing to the table. ‘And the ones that have been killing your dragons on top of their weapons were completely unexpected so listen carefully. I don’t want to see you again berating any of your subordinates without first thinking in the implications of what they are reporting. We need as much information on these enemies, don’t dismiss anything, we are facing the unknown. Did you understand strategos Heixisys?’

‘Yes my lord!’

‘Good, now leave and prepare the raid.’

Chaeselor saw Heixlsys leave, she trusted her and unless these enemies had more unexpected capabilities her plan should work.

But now he have a report and requests to make to high command and the triumvirate. He needed reinforcements, his current force of 1 million, of which 850,000 were with Strategos Aera in route to the city in the island across the channel close to the citadel wouldn’t be enough, and judging by the results obtained so far by Heixlsys, the 50 million occupation force that will come in the next months won’t be enough either. They were just as badly equipped as his million strong spear tip to deal with the weapons of the natives.

Chaeselor just hopped that more adequate troops could be prepared in time, if these apes manage to beat his spear tip and occupy the citadel they would be in position to use the gate as choke point to keep them out of their world or even to launch an invasion themselves.

A worrying and humiliating possibility, since the extinction of the ancient ones no race has manage to launch a single attack on the elven territories.

Aboard the Aircraft carrier Peter the Great near the cost Parlmer Island, Ross gulf.

He took a last look to the clock in the wall of his cabin, eleven p.m. Admiral Malikov was waiting, if the fuzzy returns of radar were correct reported few minutes ago by his aide, there were another wave of between 240 to 270 more of those lizards coming right to his and Zheng’s fleets, the fifth since dusk hit and the eleventh since the begin of operations yesterday.

None of them wanted to give those damn lizards the opportunity to get near their feelts but with the sheer number of lizards, they have been forced them to use the secondary cannons of their escorts as anti-air weapons to don’t overheat the laser batteries of their ships. 

And that was beginning to be worrying, the secondary cannons of their escorts weren’t dedicate AA guns and were consuming their ammo stores at an alarming rate and there were at least four thousand enemy dragons left for what the high altitude drones launched by Major Ramirez could see.

Neither of them wanted to be caught running out of ammo, they didn’t know how long would it take for the shipments from the continent to resupply their fleets. Even if those were useless for resupplying the ammo of their escorts immediately, they could send his planes if they were to about to run out of loads for them but that would force them to leave the area near site Zeta, the name given to the alien structures that were used by this fantasy army as entry point to Earth, until they left the range of the enemy aerial assets.  Fortunately there was a silver lining, they didn’t need to worry about fuel, with the CO₂ to Fuel “Prometheus modules” in their nuclear carriers finally working, 70 years behind schedule, but working at last.

Zheng and McElroy whose fleet was currently engaged with more of the smaller dragons, wyvern was the term used him, have reached the same conclusions that him. Without more air support from the continent they were stretched thin against such unfavorable numerical odds.  

Admiral Malikov sighed while rubbing his temples. He couldn’t’ believe it,  they were deployed by the paranoia of some members of the council, nobody expecting them to face combat of any kind, just babysit some Scientifics playing with alien tech but now here they were here, facing enemies that for all intents and purposes shouldn’t exist. The sole idea of fighting fantasy armies was hilarious or would be if there weren’t dragon’s body parts in the freezers of some of their ships, awaiting for the opportunity to be delivered to the scientific and engineering division.

Admiral Malikov left one last deep breathe scape, and stood, left his cabin towards the  CIC of the ship, once there he asked for the status of the battle soon to begin.

‘Admiral on deck!’

He acknowledge the marines guarding the entrance and proceeded to the CIC proper.

The CIC was hectic and the officers barely stopped as the mention of the Admiral. It didn’t matter, there were more important things than military etiquette while engaged in combat.

‘At ease. What is the sitrep of amphibious forces?’ Asked the Admiral.

One comms officer snapped and answered.

‘The landing troops are arriving to the beach, seventy kilometers at the north of the landing site of the enemy in the channel. Colonel Fedorov reports that while harassed by the dragons the fighter cover and the destroyers escorting his transports have keep causalities minimal sir.’

‘How many causalities?’

‘A Zubr landing ship was hit by a fireball, the air cushion is too damaged to float and 4 members of the crew are badly burned and the Ka 72 on the deck of the Ivan Gren was damage by another, sir.’

‘Only those?’ Said surprised the admiral, he was expecting that given how difficult to kill those lizards were proving with their scifi bullshit shields, those required an emergency change of the combat parameters in the autonomous Su-76 and made their forces waste more ammo than the desired.

‘Did they repealed the dragons easier than us?’

‘Apparently, the captain Petrov discovered that the dragons need to hover still to attack with precision, which made them sitting ducks, that forced them to fire while in movement even if that reduced their accuracy to almost 0, sir’.

The Admiral reflected thoroughly that last bit of information, the capabilities of the enemy were annoying but nothing otherworldly as have been the fears of high command and the council. He just hoped than the marines of colonel Federov and the ones deployed by Zheng wouldn’t meet some nasty surprise in the ground.

Eleventh day of the seventh month, year 11056 of the imperial calendar (January 8th 2153). 5 tack south of the apes’ defensive line.

Strategos Eldaerenth Aera was a very unhappy elf. For the past 3 days he had been marching nonstop to beat the 2 different forces of the apes armies to one small valley in the mountain range that cut the island in half, the only pass in a hundred tacks but apparently their chariots were fast and managed to beat him there.

And the flying automatons launched by the ships in the sea have been joined by more coming from the city and while the dragons of Heixisys have managed to destroy some of the automatons and even set ablaze one of the smaller ships, the casualty ratio was outrageous, with more than a hundred dragons’ lows for each of those damnable automatons and the ship ablaze didn’t sink and it along with its fleet retired.

And they have been attacking his troops nonstop since, from his staging point in the southern continent, in the crossing of the channel and the marching of 45 tacks to the entrance of the valley.

Fortunately the shields deployed by the magicians using Celezite as fuel once deployed managed to resist the explosives throw by the automatons but the consumption of the mineral was outrageous. Their forces would need resupply before the siege of the city.

But now Aera was wondering what these apes would do.

The reports from Heixisys’ dragons, when they weren’t being slaughtered by those automatons, showed that the apes have been digging trenches and that was strange. Normally trenches were used to siege castles and forts, protecting the attackers while getting in range of their catapults in the past, now slug throwers, and destroy the walls.

But here? They occupied the northern extreme of the valley right in the middle with some strange metallic wires in front of the trenches and their soldiers and chariots inside the trenches pointing their slug throwers of several sizes at his army.

He wasn’t sure of the range of those throwers though, and that put him in a very dangerous predicament if they outranged his, old fashioned models with only 1 tack of range and awfully inaccurate.

But his orders were standing, well the newests. Chaesalor wanted him to prove the enemy forces, reconnaissance by fire, to determine how these apes would figth.

Aera personally disagreed, his forces outnumbered those of the apes almost 280 to 1 and while it was true that his weapons were outdated, he could just sent the beasts and orcs and avoid to expose his elves and their shield have proven to stop the enemy weapons even if that was proving to be horrendously expensive and failed to stop some of their weapons, there were those dreaded beams of light but he couldn’t see the infamous mirrors here so Aera felt confident in the success of his attack.

Normally this was the moment where he would sent a herald to give the enemy to surrender but given that the apes didn’t bothered with trying to negotiate, not that it wouldn’t have mattered, made his work easier.

‘Prostator Fenzeiros.’

‘Yes, my lord?’

‘Order the troops to form, we are beginning the attack in half an hour.’

Prostator minus Eroan Fenzeiros blinked, the tradition and military etiquette demanded to ask for a surrender of the enemy before engaging in battle but he wouldn’t protests against a direct order of his lord and commander.

‘As you wish my lord.’

Aera smilled, he would triumph were Heixisys failed and prove that he deserved the honor to command the next great harvest.

7 kilometers at the north of the alien enemy line.

Colonel Federov and colonel Yanh were looking at the feed of the drone deployed one hour ago. A new model, built with the blueprints of the latest stealth spy drones designed before the catastrophes of the 2070’s, now only as the Chameleon, it was capable of optical camouflage itself, turning it almost invisible like the alien in one ancient horror movie they liked so much.

‘What do you made of their formation Yang?’

‘Similar to Napoleonic tactics, but with the addition of those beast in front of the infantry lines. It makes me thing in those roman attack dogs.’

Federov could see what Yang pointed. He guessed that the beast would be released to close in and attack their trenches melee and for the looks he didn’t want to get anywhere close to those wolfmen or crabmen, their vicious looking fangs and pincers would turn their men into mincemeat.

And there were more monstrosities, things that look like a nightmarish mix of a pig and a man, some deform and very large reptiles, bigger than any dinosaur fossil and something which only could be described as a large troll, at least 15 meters tall.

And even if those and more nightmarish creatures were marching in front what intrigued Yang the most were their commanders.

‘The infantry lines. Don’t they look to human for you Federov?’

Federov concentrated in the infantry, the complexion and the size was similar to that of humans but they were something wrong.

‘Aren’t they too slim and their gait is off, like the victims of Polio before vaccine production got restarted in 2117?’

‘Zoom in, I want to see them with more detail.’

At the order of the colonel the lieutenant operating the drone zoomed in the perfect squared of soldiers. Armed with metallic armor and an antique looking gun, but one of their commanders riding a large lizard had his helmet off, and as if the invasion of this army from a magical portal wasn’t strange enough, the look of the alien only served to further how bizarre was situation.

‘Are those elves?’

Said one of member of their staff and even if Federov wanted to scold her, and would have in any other situation for stating something so ridiculous, he found himself agreeing with her.

‘Just, what the hell is happening Yang?’

‘I don’t know.’ Yang didn’t found the look of the alien as shocking. This situation was already bizarre and he doubted there would be something that would shock him. ‘But what I know is that even if their tactics are outdated we can’t attack them with that shield of theirs.’

Fedevor was painfully aware of this, the air strikes from the past days have managed to strike the enemy formations at random intervals but for the last 36 hours they haven’t dropped it, frustrating further attacks. But fortunately Major Ramirez have managed to establish a supply route from the city to their forces in the past days and he had asked some especial ammunitions for their artillery.

‘I have an idea.’

‘And what would be your idea Federov?’

Federov pointed to the shield. ‘I observed the last air attack while you were busy with the guys in logistics. The smoke managed to pass through the shield.’

‘We aren’t authorized to use chemical weapons, and the transport that brought them only brought aerial bombs, not artillery rounds.’

‘Oh, there are other kinds of smokes that we can use.’

Said Federov with a confident smile that perplexed Yang.