Chapter 81

Lionclaw


It was now gone midnight, though the crescent moon and the amber of the ceruleum lighting around the enemy encampment was enough to see by. Because of this, Raine instructed Derfel to switch off their exterior lights and turn back on their cloaking. She was about to tell him to proceed when the two blue and purple clouds returned to hang in everyone's midst, above the heads of Sieg and Sanakht.

We have succeeded.

Minotaur's voice was very faint in her mind. Judging by everyone's sudden jerks and shudders, they had heard it too.

'Thank you, Brothers!' Raine said.

We shall use the last of our power to bring a sizeable chunk upon the ceruleum tanks and close the trenches, Minotaur said. We may have just enough strength left to do one last thing, but then we shall be utterly spent. You and your pride will have to take it from there, Lioness!

'Hey!' Zhang said, leaving his chair and waving animatedly. 'You guys are awesome! Finish up, then go get better!'

'We'll see you at the Earth Shrine!' Liu added.

Don't take too long, or we'll come looking for you! Sacred warned.

'A deal's a deal, Sacred!' Zhang said.

The clouds exited through the hull. Raine looked back over her shoulder.

'Advance, Derfel!' she commanded.

He flew them out of the cavern to find they were some fifty yards above ground, exiting through a circular opening in the vertical rock wall that would have been very difficult to reach but for expert climbers. As Raine stood next to Morfydd she now had a full view of the encampment. To the east, Brothers' 'rockslide' had already started. The GFs took shape somewhere near the edge and drove their maces home, directing earthen elemental force all the way down to ground level. This caused a gigantic chunk of the rockface to simply fall away like block of something cut by a knife, and gravity did the rest. Thousands of tons of unforgivingly, jagged cliff chunk fell sidelong onto the dozens of neatly arrayed and heavily guarded ceruleum tanks, also destroying all Magitek units in the vicinity. After this, the heavily depleted GFs became one with earth again.

Blackened trees covered the whole open space, a husk of the once beautiful forest spanning the gap between the mesas. A living example of Esthar's lack of care for the Planet. Even though Brothers had already got some measure of revenge for this blight before, in the form of thousands of Hikaru Akechi's ill-fated troops being horrifically swallowed by the earth, it aggrieved them immensely that the Esthari had set up a camp here, and they were not done issuing payback yet.

'Get us below the trees,' Raine commanded. 'As soon as we hit the ground, we disembark.'

The lack of canopy would not offer much protection from the air, and Esthari airships and Galbadian fighter jets would soon be duelling all around them. Staying airborne here would be much more dangerous than it had been above the plains. Derfel manoeuvred them between the charred trunks to land and hit the release on the two sliding doors on either side. All of them piled out in fours. The pod doors closed to leave the airship invisible to the naked eye once again, though they had its tracker should they need it to exfil.

Not that failure was an option.

The nearest Magitek were through the trees to the west. Raine counted almost thirty of them. Mercifully, the Esthari only had time to complete one trench before the Galbadians reached them, so there were no support or reserve trenches. It was further protected by hastily strewn barbed wire, dug wide enough to accommodate the heavy units. The Magitek themselves were firmly entrenched so that only one third of their bulk was above ground, including the all-important cannons and launchers, which could wear down Galbadian blast shields much faster than any of the western bullets or cannon shells could.

Now, there was no multi-coloured rays coming from the Magitek, as they had been thrown into disarray by a sudden narrowing of their trenches. All the of the static units were now trapped and some could not even rotate their cannons. Sappers and armoured corps were desperately trying to force shovels into the earth around them or otherwise could be seen trying to prize the units out. Furthermore, the rockfall had caused all kind of panic throughout the camp. Frightened foot soldiers and smaller, remote Magitek were running from between the new rock mound and the tents at the camp's northwest.

There was no one south of Raine's team and they had yet to be spotted. The hybrid special forces assemble had formed a circle around her, weapons at the ready and waiting.

'I can see Legatus Junius,' Jason, one of the C-rank SeeDs, said. He had some night-vision googles in hand, though suddenly lowered them in horror. 'She's just shot one of her own centurions in the head!'

'Leave her for the Galbadians,' Raine ordered. 'Unless she directly intercedes our path. She's not a magicite holder, and therefore not a priority.'

Raine had been given a secure line to General Wedge, who would be somewhere within the mass of Galbadians. She had also been instructed to send a single-worded code to that number when she was about to make her assault, which would prompt him to throw everything he had to make a lasting salient.

LIONCLAW, she sent, then pocketed her phone. 'Let's do this.'

'Okay, torama boys,' Damian said to Liu and Zhang. 'I'll be sure to keep those air fryers stuck, so let's not waste time in taking them out!'

He summoned Diablos, who refrained from emitting his trademark raw so as not to give away their position, but they were still spotted by a nearby patrol that had stumbled around the trees, a single Magitek and a dozen foot soldiers.

'We'll deal with them,' Aranea said.

She gestured to the other three Dragoons with a small incline of her head, and they broke from the team.

'Damian!' Raine said, seeing Aranea launch Dragonhair so true it smashed through the portal protecting the Magitek operator before it's magic lit him up like a matchbox thrown into fire. 'Take point!'

Diablos had crouched so that Damian could climb him. Then, the Wraith led their charge with a steady flight to the nearest corner of the trench. The twins bounded after him, followed by Raine and the two Garlands. The rest of the Neo-SeeDs followed at their heels, Morfydd and Derfel last; while Morfydd used the elasticated nunchucks popularised by Selphie, her brother favoured the spear and kite shield.

The mere presence of Diablos was enough to make the sappers drop their tools and flee in terror. Squall had always said Diablos had this effect on humans and weaker monsters; once he had gained the Dark Messenger's favour, Squall only had to will it, and his path through many a hostile environment became mostly unimpeded. Except the Lionheart had never one to take the easy option and had only used that perk in great need. Damian did not have the same reservations, and with everything at stake, Raine was not about to tell him otherwise.

The narrowed section of trench was filled with a distorting purple substance that swirled around the stunted legs of the Magitek, and what little progress the units had made to free themselves was rendered useless as they found themselves hopeless anchored by a hundredfold increase in gravity. Diablos went one step further, and those still with cannons aimed over the top suddenly lurched forward, unable to bring them from the ground. The same thing happened with any static artillery or heavy plasma emplacements.

Every member of the team sprinted for a unit each, using the strength of a moomba or a moogle's magic to dispatch each operator, many driving their weapons home through the portals as Aranea had. Those without bladed weapons, such as Morfydd, used magic spells; in a Trabian's case, it was always lethal ice shards. The whole process was butcher's work. Raine knew would it haunt her as she crushed the head of a first and later drove her unbreakable quarterstaff through the chest of a second, crushing his heart. It was one of the only times she had killed fellow human beings. Still, she would not order her team to do things she could not carry out herself. The operators were trapped in their glass boxes, though some of them managed to free themselves before the SeeDs reached them. Damian swooped in on these ones, even if they tried to flee, Mastema elongating and resembling more of a scythe; the Wraith become the reaper.

Before long, the Dragoons had returned to them.

'Had to make mince out of a few more of 'em!' Luna said, twisting her inherited double-headed spear.

'No point in stopping now!' Damian called from above.

'Too right!' Aranea called back.

This next part was critical. Legatus Junius would know of their presence now, and if the Galbadians did not cross the trench before the Esthari converged on Raine's team, then all their efforts would have been for nothing.

To the west, the amassed GIMs and SAMs of the Galbadians were approaching, with their motorcycle units almost at the barbed wire. There were hundreds of chocobo riders along with thousands of sprinting blue and red-uniformed foot soldiers beyond, and Wedge had ordered a bold new air offensive for this one big push. When the green-uniformed Rangers reached the barbed wire, they merely raised the front wheels of their motorbikes and used jet propulsion to make the other side. Before long, Raine's team had been bolstered by dozens of these Rangers, who immediately started north and south to engage the trapped Magitek. The spindly, purple GIMs and yellow and more durable SAMs had reached the trenches, having blown open the barbed wire. These heavy units used a similar propulsion to the motorcycles to effortlessly 'hop' over the trenches, and the chocobos just leapt gracefully over. Wedge, himself on a chocobos and his bastard sword drawn, broke from his men to assertively command sappers to place multiple temporary bridges for their heaviest units, the BGHs, to roll over.

Raine ordered Damian to perform his gravity feet as soon as Galbadian units were in range of the rest of the trench. Savouring the prospect of causing more carnage, Damian flew north without even acknowledging her order, his elongated scythe held high. Diablos soared from north to south and back again, ensuring the Magitek could not free themselves. Although Raine's team would not be on hand to eliminate the operators, as long as the Esthari were unable to use their cannons, they would not be able to prevent the Galbadians from crossing the line. Once all the trenches had been bypassed, she would get Damian to assist the Galbadian planes in any way he could, even if it meant using gravity spells to bring individual airships all the way to the ground.

Raine had the rest of her team regroup. A Ranger skidded to a halt a short distance from them, a very large man on the biggest motorcycle of them all. He was grasping what looked like a harpoon, an odd choice of weapon but befitting his girth. It was hard to tell in the darkness, though his dusky features seemed more of Almaj than of the Trabian highlands.

'We've been informed there are two Garlands among you?' the Ranger inquired.

Nadia moved through Raine's team to reach the other side, her scimitar dripping with blood.

'Yes, Siegfried and myself!' she called. 'Would that be you, Sergeant Zabac?'

'It is, ma'am!' Raine suddenly remembered Ward's grandson had been apart of Rhodry's force on the Great Plains, and he had evidently been promoted after Rhodry had given glowering feedback. 'You know that you two and Commander Deling are the only Garlands remaining, now?' he asked. 'Praetorian Reinhardt took them all out at Jericho! And Deling's still critical!'

'Yes, we do,' Siegfried said bitterly. 'As soon as we're done here, we're going there.'

By now, Junius knew what was happening and had mobilised her beleaguered and rock-pounded legion to try and close the salient. With Galbadian heavy weapons assisting them, Raine's team and the Rangers made a sortie from their narrow strip of land on the eastern side of the trench to blunt their charge and hold the line, and the imperials were emphatically beaten back through the blackened and spoiled forest.

Alexander Wedge, while still acting General, was determined to impress before formally being offered the promotion. And so, following in the footsteps of Galbadia's most fondly remembered General, Fury Caraway, Wedge fronted his chocobo cavalry at the heart of the fighting to maximise morale. After all, this was one of the two lifetime officers who had fought the Children of Fate twice and survived, held as one of the more charitable Galbadian participants of the Second Sorceress War in his country. The younger generation were honoured to follow Wedge into the jaws of the Esthar juggernaut and deal them the blow that would assuredly purge them from their continent. While Wedge knew his elated reputation was vastly exaggerated, he was determined to accomplish feats to earn it now and would not dampen the boosting effect it was having on his soldiers. Raine gave Sieg and Nadia leave to bolster his handpicked group of elite riders.

Before long, the Galbadians had a force thrice the size of the imperial legion across the trench, and Yaulney Canyon was hopelessly lost to the Esthari. Livia Junius had a reputation for being callous, and when Wedge's group reached her amidst the tents, she was indeed ruthlessly cutting down some of her own subordinates for cowardice. Wedge stepped down from his chocobo to challenge her to single combat, and though Raine was initially worried, the General quickly had the better of it. The riders roared as one when Wedge ran her through, and with the death of the Legatus, the remainder of her legion fled haphazardly east to be eventually swallowed by a much large battle theatre.

Raine had suffered no KIAs, but Derfel and two C-rankers were seriously wounded. Jason had lost his sword arm, and though the blood had been staunched, the best he could hope for was an honourable discharge. She approached Morfydd as the knelt by her brother, shouting desperately for a Galbadian medic. Derfel had endured a nasty slash to his side. His bloodied spear was broken in two next to him. When Morfydd gave her a threatening look, Raine decided it would be best not to kneel.

'I'll hold you as responsible if he dies, Raine,' Morfydd said coldly.

Raine ignored this. Instead, she met Derfel's glazy eyes.

'We couldn't have done this without you, Derfel,' Raine said. Then she returned Morfydd's stare, looked into those accusing cornflower eyes. 'You both did great, and I'm going to make sure Selphie knows that.'

Morfydd said nothing, changing a blood-soaked rag for another. Remembering that Nadia was a proficient healer, she waved the Garland over.

'Have you seen the trees, ma'am?' Derfel asked distantly.

Yes, she had. As they had fought, every last one of the ruined trees had subtly decreased in size. becoming shorter and less broad. Raine realised they were being reclaimed by the earth, every last one. Yaulney would no longer be a spoilt forest. The day after this battle was decided, the trenches were completely filled in and there was an unspoilt prairie between the natural gap in the plateaus. Over the next few years, this grassland would eventually spread to blanket the entire Monterosa, making the region much more fertile.

'I guess that's what Brothers meant by one last thing,' Raine remarked.

When Nadia reached them, her hands immediately glowed with the jade glitter pre-empting her curative spell. 'Ouch!' she commented. 'Hold still, Fly Boy!'

'Before my discharge,' Raine said, 'I'll recommend the two of you get promoted to A-rank. I've seen nothing to suggest that you don't deserve to be among SeeD's finest.'

While Morfydd ignored her again, her expression became a fraction softer. Derfel said, 'Thanks, ma'am. That means a lot coming from you.'

Operation Lionclaw was over, and following this battle, Wedge himself became known as the Lionclaw. With the victory at Yaulney, the Galbadians were able to commit their entire land force to Timber. In the eyes of the Timberians, this act of aiding their liberation would help redeem the Galbadian military for abandoning Timber to annexation two years ago, and furthermore for their own subjugation of the country decades earlier. With the Forest groups assailing from the south and the Saronans in a pitched fight in the north, the main column of Sorceress Ultimecia's army would soon be fighting on three fronts, marking another phase of Operation Excalibur as complete.

And Battleship Island was about to enter the fray from the east.