-Chapter 5-
For the rest of the day, Foxhound roamed about Athens' countryside, taking out patrols of golems and border patrol stations along the way. Luckily for Karith, Leena didn't bring up the mishap regarding the active golems at the first camp. She was waiting for more instances of poor direction and for the others in the squad to vocally question Karith's leadership. Until then, Leena was content on being patient until the right time came along; though, she was growing increasingly wary of being under Karith's command with every engagement.
The next day, Foxhound was right back to it, taking out Athenian defensive encampments and forward observation posts. As they were searching for their next target, they happened to spot the main Alyeskan force camped out on the Athenian side of the border. Seeing as they were so close to friendly forces, they decided to rendezvous with them for a quick resupply and update on the campaign.
Upon reaching the camp in their unique Reynards, they couldn't help but notice several heads turn towards them to see what was up. Karith and the rest of Foxhound Squad walked proudly through the camps, heading towards the main command tent to check in with Gen. Morrios. After dropping off their golems for maintenance and rearmament with the golem specialists, Karith and her squad approached the command tent to see how the army was doing. Kale and Mikael went to grab some food from the officer chow line while Leena broke away to take a hot shower.
Seeing Morrios talking with his staff, Karith went over to report in. "Sir, Capt. Blackblood reporting in," said Karith with a crisp salute.
Hearing Karith, the general turned around and returned the salute in a typical, lackadaisical fashion a general officer was known for. "Well now. If it isn't the leader of Foxhound Squad. I've been hearing good things from our scouts in the field," he said, putting her at ease. "Seems like you're doing well based on the handiwork they're reporting on."
"Thank you, sir. So… what have we missed?" asked Karith, standing casually with her hands behind her back.
Morrios dismissed his assistants and focused on Karith, positioning himself opposite of her across the campaign planning table. "A few hours after you and your unit commenced operations, I marched the 5th Golem Cavalry Battalion across the Athenian border and began our campaign against Athens. We encountered little to no opposition, thanks in part to you and your team, and made it here with no trouble at all. Unfortunately, our supply line was having difficulty traversing over the Tilnor River and is lagging behind. Our scouts indicate that Athenian forces have caught wind of our operation and are preparing to launch a counterattack. They've already dispatched a small, fast attack team to intercept our lightly guarded supply line as they try to catch up." He paused to clear his throat, taking out a map of the area.
"That doesn't sound good. What are you going to do about that?" asked Karith, placing her hands on the table.
"A good question. I was going to try and send out a unit, but even at full speed they wouldn't make it in time and would hopefully at least get there at the same time the enemy did at best," he said, pointing out the supply line and supposed location of the enemy on the map. "But it seems like another option just opened up for me."
Karith took note of where the general was pointing on the map then looked up to see his eyes on her. "Sir?" she asked, wondering what he was talking about.
"Look, I know you're some sort of fancy, new independent unit and all, so I can't force you to comply, but I'm highly suggesting that you take your unit and intercept the enemy for me," he said, his voice firm as he looked her in the eye. "Your Reynards should be more than capable enough of catching up to the enemy and taking them out before they can attack our supply line. And remember, suggesting is the key word here, captain."
Feeling a bit tense from having the general addressing her so seriously, Karith couldn't help but give in to his wishes. It wasn't too out of the way, and it was for the greater good of the Alyeskan forces, so she figured it would be all right to handle. "Of course, sir! We'll take care of it right away!"
Morrios cracked a slight chuckle as a smile formed out of the corner of his mouth, satisfied that he was able to order her around despite her status. "Good. Get with your unit and head on out. The welfare of our supply line is depending on you," he said, motioning his assistants back over to pick up the discussion from before.
"Right away, sir!" said Karith as she saluted before leaving the table. She quickly gathered Kale and Mikael from the chow area and went searching for Leena.
"Hey, what's the deal? I wasn't done yet," said Kale as she walked with Karith, disgruntled about spontaneously being taken away from her meal.
Karith was too busy looking around to reply, her eyes darting every which way for any sign of Leena. After Kale's groaning and moaning continued to grow in volume, Karith finally answered her and explained what they were doing. "We got to run a little errand for the general, so we need to find Little Miss Shadow," she said, panting slightly as she fast-walked around the camp. Suddenly, she caught a glimpse of a female with a blonde bun and hurried over. "There you are! C'mon, we've got work to do," she said, catching her breath.
Hearing Karith addressing her loudly almost to the point of making a scene, Leena sighed with disdain and slowly turned to her. "What. Is. It?"
Paying no attention to her apathetic expression, Karith motioned for her to follow. "We've got a mission to do. The general wants us to intercept an enemy unit before they hit our supply line, so get a move on," she said.
"So we're taking orders from the general now? Huh. Kinda defeats the purpose of being an independent unit, don't you think, Fearless Leader?" asked Leena sarcastically as she placed her hands on her hips in a snooty fashion.
Karith let out an exaggerated groan as she mimicked pulling out her hair from all the pent up stress. "Just shut up and get back to your golem, okay? Can we please act like adults for a second here? Geez! And you call yourself an elite pilot of the Shadow Corps. You'd think the notion of supporting the greater good would come easily to someone like you, but guess not," she said.
Leena merely scoffed; crossing her arms over her chest. "Personally, I think we should just go about our business and continue hitting frontline enemy units. The supply line can take care of themselves for all I care."
"You can't be serious. Those are fellow Alyeskan lives at risk," said Karith, narrowing her eyes at her.
"Morrios is an old fool. If Gen. Lupin and my unit were here, we wouldn't be having this problem. We'dve already taken the fight to the Athenian advanced guard and paved a road straight to the capital," said Leena. "If I were in command, that's exactly what we'd be doing right now. But no. We're wasting our time covering up some old geezer's mistakes. Let the supply line get hit. Maybe he'd learn proper military strategy as a result. Then Shadow Corps and I can mop up the mess and claim all the spoils of war for ourselves."
Karith couldn't bear to listen to any more of her haughty banter and began making her way to her golem. "Just shut up and get ready. We leave in five," she said, shaking her head in annoyance.
Kale, who was standing off to the side and avoiding the kerfuffle all together, followed after her as did Mikael. Leena watched her squad leave and rolled her eyes, following shortly after them. The four of them hurried back to their golems and strapped in. By the time they got back, their golems were fully repaired and restocked, ready to deploy back into the field.
Karith thanked the specialists and hopped into her unit, as did the rest of her squad.
"All right, team. We've got to move fast and make up for lost time," said Karith as she jogged out of the camp and onto open ground.
Once they were clear, they engaged their boosters and began dashing off towards the enemy, bounding from point to point. There was really no need for stealth since they were traversing through land already navigated by the Alyeskan main force. If anything, all they should see along the way were destroyed golems and ruined outposts, so they focused on moving as fast as they could to engage the enemy before the supply line was attacked.
After dashing along the ground for almost ten minutes non-stop, Kale radioed in to Karith's golem. "Hey, Karith, uh… are we almost there? I don't think my golem can take much more of this jumping business," she said, worried that her unit might give out at any second.
"Don't worry; we're just about there," said Karith as she looked ahead. Suddenly, she came to an abrupt halt as she had her squad freeze in place. "Hold up. There's a small town ahead of us," she said, crouching down as she zoomed in with her golem's sensors. Upon zooming in, she gasped with horror. "What the…?" she said unknowingly into the radio.
"What is it? What do you see? Asked Mikael, who was crouched down in the rear of the formation.
Without warning, Karith got up and hurried over to the town, stomping through the grass and bushes. Seeing her advancing on her own, the rest of the squad quickly got up as well and followed after her. When they all reached the town and beheld the sight Karith saw, they all gasped, even Leena. Littering the streets were the bloodied bodies of the townsfolk. Men, women, and even children. Everyone was slaughtered and left to rot for the crows to feast on. Kale nearly gagged at the sight of the carnage, not used to seeing so much death in one place being a golem pilot. She always saw the mangled remains of the golem itself, but rarely the pilot.
"What is all this?" asked Leena, looking around the town and watching her step to prevent from stepping on any corpses.
Perplexed at the situation, Karith sneered to herself and turned to her team. "Spread out and look for survivors. Even though they're in our enemy's territory, they're still civilians and need to be protected."
Her team acknowledged and began surveying the town, seeing nothing but bloodshed and death all around them. Even to the four veteran soldiers, the grisly scene sickened them to their stomachs. What was curious to them was that there were no signs of a battle anywhere. There were no dead soldiers or destroyed golems about. Only civilians.
"This doesn't make any sense. Squad, find anything yet?" asked Karith.
Mikael scanned a row of houses he was passing by, seeing nothing but bodies and broken windows. "Nothing. This is so bizarre. What do you think happened here?" he asked.
"I don't know, but we'll report this to the general once we get back," said Karith. Suddenly, a portion of the building next to her erupted into splinters of wood and debris as a pressgun's bullet impacted it. Karith ducked, raising her shield to defend herself from the unknown assailant. "Squad, regroup!" she said, her eyes darting all around to find where the shooting was coming from. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted three enemy golems bearing down on her position, She raised her pressgun and opened fire, causing the enemy to break formation and take cover behind some buildings. "Squad, enemy contact! Three golems on the north side of town," she said over the radio. Once the enemy had taken cover, Karith moved into a new firing position to pursue them. As she was moving through the town, one of the enemy golems got the drop on her and swung his longsword.
"We knew you'd come back! You fiends are going to pay!" said the enemy pilot, using his golem's loudspeaker to talk to Karith.
"What are talking about?" asked Karith through her own loudspeaker, easily blocking his blow with her shield. She then followed through with a punch to his face after dropping her pressgun. As the enemy reeled from the attack, she drew her close quarters combat saber to fight with.
Once the enemy recovered, he struck out in a rage-induced manner, attacking recklessly with his longsword once more. Karith, being a composed and seasoned pilot, easily parried his blow and impaled her saber right through his chest, however, aiming slightly off center to avoid killing the pilot. The enemy golem went limp and dropped his weapon as Karith kept her sword through him. "Now talk. What did you mean you knew we'd be back?" she asked.
Severely injured from the blow, the enemy pilot's voice was weak and muffled over his loudspeaker, but still discernible. "You Alyeskans will pay for what you've done. Others will find out what you did here," he said, gasping for air every so often.
Confused by his words, Karith pushed on with the interrogation. "Listen here. I'm not sure what's going on, so why don't you start from the beginning. What exactly happened here?" she asked, growing more impatient.
The enemy pilot coughed and groaned before he began talking again. "Your fellow countrymen killed them. They killed… them all. Your friends came by not long ago and my unit and I were supposed to defend the village. But… what were my three golems to do against such a large force? It would have been suicide to go against them. So… we hid. We hid like cowards, watching from the hills as the people of this quiet, friendly village were cut down in the streets like vermin."
As he spoke, Karith began to grow more and more doubtful as she listened to him with her undivided attention. When he was done, she shook her head in disbelief. "We would never do something like this. Surely you're mistaken," she said.
In his last few breaths of life, the enemy pilot described the person who led the massacre. "It was him, your general- General Morrios, who led the attack," he said before taking his last breath.
As he remained silent, Karith withdrew her saber as she looked down at his golem, conflicted by what the pilot had said. Suddenly, more enemy bullets impacted near her position as she jumped out of the line of fire. She raised her shield and took a combat stance as she turned towards the other two enemy golems coming right at her.
"Come get me, you monster!" said one of the enemy pilots as he continued to fire while he ran.
Before he knew it, the edge of a halberd came crashing down on his shoulder from behind, cleaving its way clean through right down the middle. Noticing that his teammate got utterly devastated, he turned completely around to see a black golem standing in front of him, her halberd at the ready. As he was about to aim his pressgun, a rapier came hurling down on his arm, splitting it in two. After disarming his foe, Mikael thrust his weapon through the golem's torso, causing it to go limp with the pilot's swift death. Seeing the rest of her team mop up the last of the enemy, Karith lowered her shield and made her way over to them.
"So… what were you able to find?" asked Kale as she came out from cover, heading over to Karith.
"A lot, and none of it is good or makes sense," said Karith. As soon as she was about to explain what the pilot had divulged to her, she got an incoming short-range transmission from the supply-line, though the quality was diminished due to the distances it was being transmitted over.
"Is there any friendly Alyeskan forces out there? This is the supply-line; we're under attack!' said one of the officers in charge.
With a loud groan, Karith prepared to dash off to assist them. "I'll tell you all later after we deal with the supply line. For now, let's just get there and take these guys out. It should just be right on the other side of this hill," she said, focusing her concerns to the back of her mind,
Kale and Mikael exchanged confused glances despite their golems being incapable of expressing emotions. "Uh, all right. If you say so," said Kale.
Karith gave a nod and hurried off in the direction of the supply-line, her squad dashing behind her. Foxhound Squad quickly rendezvoused with the forces under fire in time before their defenses were overrun. Once there, they efficiently took out the enemy golems that ambushed them, having no trouble at all with the fight. The remaining golems that were part of the supply-line security team thanked Foxhound and continued on their way, leaving Karith and the others to their own devices.
"So tell us, Dear Leader. What did you find out about that village back there?" asked Leena as she placed her halberd on her back.
Karith let out a sigh and proceeded to tell her and the rest of the squad exactly what the pilot had told her. Once she broke the news, her squad was in disbelief, especially Leena. Leena contested that Karith was mistaken, but Karith argued that what she heard was the truth. It took a while, but Kale and Mikael eventually got on Karith's side, wanting to ask the general if he knew anything about the issue. Leena was skeptical about the whole story, not wanting to believe that their forces were capable of such a thing, but it wouldn't hurt to hear it from the general himself she figured.