Area Eight, January, a.t.b. 2015
The mirror in the bathroom of the quarters they shared (they bunked together now, just as they had when they were at the Academy) was of remarkably decent quality. It was perhaps a little old-fashioned as such things went, admittedly, a sheet of tempered glass backed with silver, but the image that stared back at her from out of it was clear, undistorted, and recognisably Justine—for all that there were a few caveats…
"How'd I do?" Suzaku asked from behind her, leaning against the threshold with her arms crossed. "I've never done it before, so I don't know why ya asked me of all people, but…"
Justine ran her clawed hand through her raven hair, no longer the curtain it had been, and now it hung down to chin length, only just brushing against her slender shoulders, its dark iridescence glimmering in the bathroom light. She flashed a smile into the mirror, and said, "There's no cause for concern, Suzaku. Your first time doing this or not, you performed magnificently nonetheless."
"Okay," she accepted with a shrug. "Still doesn't explain why ya didn't get Takane-chan to handle it for ya, or someone else who's better with all this…"
Justine chuckled lightly at the vague gesture with which Suzaku punctuated her statement. But this was an answer she was very much prepared to give. "It felt more symbolically meaningful, for one. For the other, the others might either try to talk me out of it, or leave me with something that's harder to maintain in terms of effort than we can afford to expend. I mean, I was using an entire bottle of shampoo every time I wanted to wash my hair towards the end there… And that's leaving aside how damnably uncomfortable it gets when it decides it wants to start retaining water…"
"I mean, no one's gonna say ya didn't have a metric fuck-tonne of hair, Justine," Suzaku snorted. "I guess it doesn't really matter, not if you're happy with how it turned out, an' all…"
"Believe me, Suzaku," Justine chortled, as she beheld the image of herself with short hair for what was perhaps the very first time in her life. It was almost wavy like this, without all that extra weight to keep each strand so very lustrously straight, and she found she was rather fond of the effect—though she took a bit of extra care to make sure that the part obscured the eye that bore the brand. "I very much am."
"Alrighty, then," her best friend nodded, pushing off from the doorframe into the bathroom that the two of them shared. "Well, ya gotta finish gettin' ready before we can knock 'em dead, so…"
"Yes, I suppose you're right," Justine sighed, pushing away from the sink she was leaning over, that she might better scrutinise her reflection. But before she moved further, she paused, and took a look at the hand that still had normal human cuticles: and upon closer inspection, she spotted discolouration creeping up from the base of all five nails, progressively blackening them as they encroached upon healthy tissue. "I seem to have a new set of claws growing… Curious…"
"No one's gonna notice, Justine," Suzaku sighed from further into the room that they bunked in. "Ya wear gloves all day, after all. Now come over here, and put a shirt on, for fuck's sake."
"Very well," Justine huffed, leaving the bathroom behind her and turning off the light as she passed the switch by. Indeed, she was only clothed below the waist, both to facilitate Suzaku's amateur attempts to cut her hair, and to wash it out right after; so, in the interest of making the most of the time that remained to them, she returned to the process of getting herself properly dressed.
It was the height of summer in the Falkland Islands; which meant that it rarely went above seven or eight degrees Celsius, the sky was awash in sunless, rainy misery, the area inundated with a misty drizzle if not an outright downpour, and a substantial amount of wind chill swept in on the salty ocean breeze. For all of these circumstances and more besides, Justine was quite glad of the coat she'd been given as a wedding present, as between it, her blouse, her gloves, her breeches, and even her overbust leather corset with the bulletproof lining sewn into it, she was shielded from the worst of the dreary conditions. The viceroy of Area Eight, a man of noble birth with violet hair and maroon eyes (around whom Lisa seemed to be incredibly uncomfortable for reasons Justine suspected the nature of, but assumed her friend would see fit to address with her in her own time), Duke Horatio, of the House of Gregory, had allowed them use of one of the bases that had been built for the Defence of the Falklands, which had been maintained by a skeleton crew ever since, as well as the right to appropriate whatever hardware that had been stationed there; and so that was where she, her friends, and the retinues they'd been able to drum up were quartered. It was a fortuitous enough turn that at first, Justine surmised that the news of her task had begun to spread in earnest; though speculation in other directions would be rude, unless or until Lisa decided whether or not she wished to divulge the source of the discomfort she exhibited in the viceroy's presence.
Unfortunately, the only Knightmares stationed here were fourth-generation and older, a smattering of Glasgows and amphibious Portman models (a preliminary examination revealed that Area Eight had no Sutherlands among its domestic forces, with only 'Knightpolice' model Knightmare Frames, tanks, and a large number of stationary anti-materiel emplacements to act as deterrents against assault from Area Six). It wasn't something that bothered Justine all that much, however; she'd come here knowing that she'd have to find a way to work with what she had, and being given free reign to equip her motley band, the 588th, with whatever outmoded materiel was on offer was already more than she'd expected to get.
She stepped out of the barracks and into the staging area, members of various retinues of household troops rushing briskly across the way in an effort to beat the already grey weather's oncoming foul turn. At her side, Jeremiah and Suzaku trailed just a bit after her, guarding her flanks as she strode into the bracing winds, paying no mind to the approaching thunderheads as she did so. Magellan wouldn't have needed the strait that bears his name if weather around here was meant to be consistently hospitable, after all. But this is good: it's been predicted that there is one hell of a storm coming in our direction, and tonight? Tonight, we shall use this tempest to our advantage…
Undeterred by the misty drizzle, the trio made their way across the base, the gusts of wind and rain whipping the hem of Justine's black coat into a fluttering frenzy. Every so often, they'd cross the paths of a few techs who were part of the base's aforementioned skeleton crew, who took the time to bow and bid her a good morning, observing their courtesies before moving off, or members of different retinues who did the same before continuing about their business; Justine nodded to both groups in acknowledgement, and they made good time, arriving at the command offices before any one of them got too thoroughly drenched.
"Ah, Justine," Villetta greeted her shortly after they were in the door with an expression that could perhaps best be described as 'professional neutrality', her position as Justine's aide allowing her the leeway to be familiar in a way that Jeremiah, what with his highly visible position as her Knight of Honour, was denied—although, it also didn't seem as though Jeremiah desired such leeway, or would make any real use of it even if he had it. Villetta fell in directly alongside her as they approached, filling her in: "I just got word that the last of the Portmans have cleared final checks. They're battle-ready."
Justine nodded. "Any word on Baroness von Hellman?"
"She's prepared to receive us," Villetta replied. "Though, there was a brief hiccup a bit earlier. The good baroness wanted to renegotiate for more favourable terms on sakuradite shipments. Sayuri believes it has been resolved, however."
"Be that as it may, expect that we've been double-crossed," Justine instructed. "The baroness is not a moron. She would never have aimed to renegotiate unless she had what she felt was sufficient reason to believe she has more leverage now than she did during the initial negotiations. It's likely that she seeks to back what she sees as the winning side, throwing in her lot with the rebels, or is otherwise compromised."
"Understood. I'll tell Sayuri to arrange for the materiel we've been promised to be discreetly moved outside of the city limits," said Villetta. "Should I tell her to get rid of the baroness, as well?"
"Not immediately," Justine refused. "Von Hellman will be expecting that. Have her set something up so that it can be triggered remotely once we're through. Ultimately, one way or another, Santa Cruz has quite the interestingnight ahead of it…"
"Right. I'll go pass that along, and then meet you all in the war room," said Villetta, nodding as she split off once again.
The war room of the command offices amounted to a glorified conference room; but it was a good place to gather a large number of people, which was what Justine needed it to do. Cracking her knuckles, she pushed the double doors open with a deft flick of her wrists, striding in to come face-to-face with all the rest of her friends, gathered in this one chamber. Almost as one, they all rose the moment they saw her, but she lifted both her hands in response. "Peace, my friends. Be seated. We'll be on our feet all night: we don't need to be standing on ceremony, too."
With silent affirmation, they did as she bade them, as she made her way around the room to her seat at the table's head. Suzaku split off and took her spot to the immediate left of the commander's position, then, and as Justine lowered herself into her own chair, Jeremiah stood behind her, a looming presence and assurance of her security, while the spot to her left remained rather conspicuously vacant. Justine spared a moment to look all around the dark-stained round wooden table, taking the different postures of each of her friends gathered here. Suzaku wasted no time leaning back into her own chair, propping her boots up upon the tabletop as she reclined, rocking softly back and forth on the chair's swivel joint, her hands folded atop her belly with her fingers interlaced; Sif, who was beside her, was leaned back in a similar fashion, though both of her feet remained firmly upon the floor, and instead she slouched somewhat back into the cushion; Yennefer sat perfectly upright in the next spot over, her fingers interlaced as she rested her hands upon the wooden tabletop; Lindelle was leaned forth a bit right next to Yen, her elbow propped upon the wood to hold her head up, while her other hand was wrapped around the stem of a steaming mug of what looked to be coffee, which she seemed to be nursing idly.
Odette, who came next, also seemed to lean forth upon the table, but in marked contrast to Lin, her elbows were supporting nothing, and instead, her hands were folded, her fingers interlaced, much like Yen's; then Marika, who leaned back in her chair slightly, but she avoided the temptation of slouching as she reclined, instead sitting with her legs crossed, and her hands were laid upon the arm-rests of the chair, which didn't seem to be moving much. Liliana, who was next to her, more or less mirrored Yennefer's proper posture, though Lisa's sitting posture beside the lancer bore a much stronger resemblance to Marika's, but for the fact that like Lindelle, she propped the side of her face upon her hand, while her elbow planted itself into its arm-rest; Hecate sat tall, her hands perched upon the rests like Marika had done, but with both legs pressed firmly into the floor; and last but not least came Villetta's empty chair, directly to the right-hand side of Justine's chair. Straightening up her own posture, just a touch, and getting herself a bit more comfortable with the provided chairs, she did her best to ignore the way the outdated green carpeting caught her attention, and focused instead on opening the meeting properly. "I bid you all a good morning. Villetta will be joining us shortly. Until then, how did everyone sleep? We've got a big day ahead of us."
Lindelle was the first to volunteer, lifting her coffee mug to herald her contribution, followed by a wan but genuine smile. "I'm managing well enough. We've got the medical supplies all packed and loaded, so at least we won't die of dysentery or cholera while on the march. The jury is out on malaria, though…"
Hecate, whose seat was on the opposite side of the table, spoke next. "The albatrosses aren't very pleasant, but from what I can make out, they haven't observed any significant concentrations of enemy forces. Just a lot of convoys."
"The Rochefort contingent is running some last-minute training sims on the control scheme of the Portman," said Odette, bringing a hand out of the fold to gesture in vague indication, her golden eyes sharp and burning with leashed anticipation. "I think it's safe to say we'll be ready."
"Well, I'm officially a free woman," Marika declared cheerily, leaning back even further in her seat. "Apparently the House of Steiner was appalled by my family's refusal to send part of their retinue, so the matter of my betrothal is now, thankfully, null and void. Though, I've gone ahead and spoken privately with Leonhardt, and we've agreed to stay friends."
"Is that so?" Justine mused with a mirthful quirk of her brow. "Then I suppose congratulations are in order."
"Good on ya," Suzaku grinned, shooting little finger-guns into the air.
"Happy for you," said Sif, turning her head to regard Marika and nod once.
"We all are," Yennefer clarified with a mildly-amused smile.
"I can confirm that," Lisa chimed in, raising two fingers on her laid-flat hand, and flicking them in a gesture clearly meant to mimic a salute.
"Well, thank you all, but that's not the end of the story, per se," Marika admitted, though her cheeks flushed pink at the well-wishes from their friends as she returned to her previous angle of reclination. "He's also agreed to advocate for us with his family, so we might well get a complement of Steiner soldiers to make up for my family's lack of contributions."
"That's certainly welcome news," Justine nodded, smiling at her and nodding slowly. "Well done."
"What's this I hear about the House of Steiner?" Villetta asked as she entered the room, having used an entrance closer to where her seat was located—directly to Justine's right, to which the dark-skinned and silver-haired woman made a rather brisk beeline.
Marika coloured even further, her complexion nearing crimson, almost, as she very nearly sat fully forward and upright, as though haunted by the manifold ghosts of posture admonitions past in the midst of her verbal struggle. "I…um… Well, my… You see, I'm no longer engaged to be married. To Leonhardt Steiner. Apparently his family was…disturbed by how willing my family was to starve us of resources…"
"Ambition is all well and good," mused Justine. "But one must take care not to be so ambitious that they put their agreements they've formed with other parties at risk. It's considered remarkably poor form."
"'The swiftest grass that grows the tallest is the first to be reaped,'" Lindelle quoted with a rueful note in her voice. She took a long draught from her coffee before she explained, "My lord father is rather fond of that one. Heard it all throughout childhood…"
"Oh! Well, congratulations on your newfound freedom," said Villetta, smiling fondly, nearly to the point of indulgence, in Marika's direction—Marika, who then proceeded to bury her face in her hands and to do her best to look practically anywhere else, leaning fully forward upon the table.
"Th-thank you, Villetta," Marika managed to respond.
"We slept well, for the record," Yennefer remarked with a teasing smirk; but Justine did not fail to notice how it took attention off of Marika, allowing her the space to recover her composure.
"We're ready to do our part," Sif agreed, nodding her head as she folded her arms across her chest. "Just say the word."
"Same with us," Lisa added, lowering the hand that was supporting her head and interlacing her fingers with Liliana's, lifting their entwined hands to better punctuate the statement, much to the latter's play-acted chagrin. "Though visibility's going to be a bitch either way…"
"I'm not particularly concerned about that for this operation," said Justine. "The dangerous parts of it will likely be handled by underwater sensors, after all. Speaking of concerns, however: Villetta, Hecate has stated that the birds haven't seen any concentrations of forces, just a lot of movement."
"That much, I can confirm," she replied, leaning forth to plant her elbows upon the tabletop as she spoke, interlacing her fingers in the process. "The rebel nobles are still mobilising their retinues. As far as the Shinozaki's intelligence goes, they're rushing to get onto war footing. It seems that they declared their independence before they were properly prepared to enforce it."
"Which means that there's some unknown element in play that's emboldened them to challenge the empire before they were ready," Justine deduced, leaning back in her chair and drumming the fingers of her changing hand upon the table. "But that's ultimately to our benefit. Much easier to slip in undetected if they haven't had the time to properly set up surveillance systems—and it'll be easier for us to move around and pick our targets with relative impunity, what with the general chaos of the situation at hand."
"Agreed," Villetta said, nodding along, a fine silver brow furrowed in consideration. "Shall I devote some resources to discovering the nature of this unknown element? Just in case?"
"…Quietly," Justine said after a moment of thought. "It's not an immediate concern, but to ignore it outright isn't a risk we can afford to take. Our situation is more than fraught enough as it stands…"
"I'll tell Sayuri to pass along that it's a tertiary priority, then," her aide-de-camp replied.
"Very good. Now, to the point," Justine continued, moving her chair closer to the table. There was a temptation, given that it was one of those rotating chairs on wheels, to play around with it for a moment; it was easily corralled, however, and she refocused herself on the task that lay before them. "Lisa, what's the latest estimate on when the stormfront will hit our area of operation?"
"Between eighteen hundred and two thousand hours, when last I checked," said the sniper. "But the severity they're predicting seems like it's an order of magnitude below the true impact this storm will have. The rate at which the air speed and humidity is changing is all wrong. I don't expect that they'll have cause to discover their error for at least a few hours yet, though—it'll reach that break-point, sure as the sun shall rise, but it's not quite there at the moment. As to whether this'll affect the operation? If anything I think it's a good omen, personally. The scramble to make up for the disparity in predictions will add additional cover for us while we work. It's a good turn, in all honesty…"
"I'll take your assessment into consideration, then," said Justine, nodding. "And how's everyone's packing going? Not that you all need to be reminded of this yet again, but…"
"Don't leave behind anything you can't do without," all the rest of them quoted in unison, including Villetta, much to Justine's immediate shock. In fact, the only voice she didn't hear in the mix besides her own was Jeremiah's, and she could feel that he was grinning behind her back, she just knew it.
"Fine, then. Just don't come crying to me when you've left a precious family heirloom behind," the princess huffed, a tad miffed at being so suddenly ganged-up on, as she crossed her arms beneath her bust and very pointedly did not pout. "Cheeky prats, the lot of you…"
There was a collective chuckle at that, and at her expense; Justine, instead of taking the laughter at all personally, chose to take it as an indication that spirits were high—which was a good omen in every regard, she knew; she imagined she could fill entire libraries with accounts of good, even brilliant strategies that nonetheless fell to pieces, or even ended campaigns, due in large part to poor morale. "Well, at the very least, I'm glad that you're all feeling up to cracking jokes. Treasure it; that jovial mood might come to be in short supply as we forge ahead…"
Marika stood suddenly, determination blazing in her eyes. "Here's to all of us, then! That we'll all survive to see our victory, and then once again make merry at journey's end!"
Sif grinned at Marika's declaration, standing from her chair herself. "Hear, hear!"
"Hear, hear!" came the answering chorus, with raised arms and steely eyes.
Justine took it upon herself, then, to stand, and then to speak her piece to all those who had believed in her, and followed her this far, past the point of no return and to the dawn of war. At the very least, she owed them this much. "Then upon my name as Justine vi Britannia, I swear that I shall do all in my power to make that pledge a reality."
All of a sudden, a dull burn flashed into existence, settling in her left eye. It came unbidden, but she made no move to suppress it, nor to control any damage it might do.
There was, after all, no need.
"We've never doubted you for a second, Justine, not truly," Yennefer remarked from where she sat, her fingers still woven into each other upon the lacquered wooden tabletop. "And we don't intend to start now."
"Hear, hear!" Liliana called, beating Odette, whose jaw was half open already, to the punch—much to the latter's chagrin, and Liliana's obvious teasing amusement.
"Hear, hear!" came the answering chorus.
"Oh, and, by the way," Yennefer added, as if the subject on which she spoke was an afterthought. "Love what you've done with your hair. The effect is very striking indeed~."
"Thank Hell, someone finally said it," Hecate huffed, as though she'd been holding the same sort of sentiment back for quite a while. "I just didn't want to be the first one to point it out."
There was a murmur of muted agreement and generally approving sentiment that followed, and that rendered any attempt that Justine might have made to suppress a grin of her own null and void. "You're all very kind. But it's Suzaku who truly deserves the credit—she's the one who cut it this morning, after all."
"Well, in that case, you did an excellent job of it, Suzaku," said Liliana, shooting a smile towards the young woman in question. "You should be proud."
Suzaku rubbed at the back of her neck, subtly embarrassed by the praise. "Thanks, I guess…"
Justine let her grin subside into a soft smile as she swept her gaze across the room. "Does anyone else have anything they'd like to add? No? Alright then. Before I set you all free, please, allow me to give you all one final reminder: we're set to commence with the operation when the weather conditions have deteriorated to the required threshold, and we've got a fair few hours to kill before that time comes. So take this opportunity to go and get something to eat, see to the last of your final preparations, go over our route one more time, and get some rest. We've all got a long night ahead of us. Dismissed."
She wondered when she'd come to view silence as merely a prelude to clamour…
Even without sound, the destruction was deafening.
Not for the first time, she marvelled at the fact that something so wondrous as the stars on high had such violent births…
The doors slid open, smooth and silent. The hurried efforts and steeled nerves of the bridge crew, as well as the captain's barking of orders, came to a sudden halt; all of them turned at once, and saluted her. "Your majesty…!"
"At ease," she replied, raising a hand to the captain. Yes, this was her flagship: Captain Avaryn had been hand-picked for command; and so far, the good captain had given her no cause whatsoever to come to regret that choice. She turned to address the bridge crew. "Steady on. This is what we've trained for, each and every one of us. It's the day we've all been waiting for. We need but stay the course…"
The shockwave from another explosion rocked the vessel, the black leviathan of a ship she'd built, all to wage a war like none other before it. The final war, that would end war across the universe—forever.
This was never going to be easy,she reminded herself as she climbed the dais, and sat herself upon her throne, crossing one leg over the other as she got comfortable. But it's worth doing, nonetheless…
Her best friend, ever faithful, who was among the first of the vagrants and vagabonds she'd forged into a nation in the early days of her eternal youth, approached her side as they both beheld the luminous expanse before them. "This is the true might of the Ylvarin Empire that we're witnessing, isn't it?"
She nodded; and with a heavy sigh, she remarked, "And so begins the Second War in Heaven…"
"We sent word to the fleets of the Shining Capital, urging them to quit the field and retreat," her friend informed her. "But we got no response. As best we can tell, they were all wiped out."
She scoffed. "Unsurprising. The enemy's brought one of their godlings to the field, after all, and deicide has ever been a tricky bit of business… Captain!"
"I am at your command, your majesty," Avaryn responded, bowing.
"We have all the eyes in Creation fixed upon us. I think we ought to show them," she mused with a smirk like a blade.
The officer's eyes went wide, in equal parts terror and awe. "You mean…?!"
"It's high time we taught not just the pompous sneering highborn in the Shining Capital, but all who dwell throughout existence, how we of the Northern Kingdom make war," she declared. Then, she cast out her hand, and commanded: "Send word to the fleet! We're commencing the operation. All hands to battle stations! Prepare the Zero-form Balefire Spear!"
"Y-yes! Your majesty!" the captain cried out, saluting, and trembling with anticipation.
"Your majesty!" echoed the bridge crew who had overheard, pausing to salute themselves, before turning back to their consoles to fulfil her orders.
She, for her part, returned to her throne. Her friend leaned in once again, and said, "With this, we've done the impossible…"
"So we have," she replied, crossing her legs again. "What we do here today, no one shall ever find it possible to deny. In one fell swoop, we've changed the course of history…"
A cry came up from the crew: "The vanguard has engaged! Barbstorm Fleet is under heavy fire, and Fangshield and Drakecleaver Fleets are moving to reinforce! The Godslayer is primed, and ready to fire at your majesty's command!"
"Acquire a target-lock on the nullgrowth metasphere," she commanded. "Let's make this little weapon of ours earn its sobriquet, hmm…?"
"Target acquired… Target locked…!"
And with the weight of the natural order's gravestone upon her lips, she declared: "Fire."
The battlespace lit up beneath a harrowing torrent of black and scarlet and violet; the nullgrowth metasphere, a vessel grown to bear a deific being across the empire that forged them, for the first time did not manipulate fate to evade the beam, and instead bore the full brunt of it. There was a moment, an instant suspended in time, where even the march of the heavens ceased its celestial dance; and then, the demiplane contained within wood and sorcery winked out of existence.
"So," her friend remarked mildly. "All the lights in the cosmos are now our enemies, huh?"
"Let them come…" she vowed. "Whether they be gods, or kings, or all the armies in Creation… I'll litter the darkness between the stars with their corpses…"
At once, Justine snapped awake, her eyes flying open.
She blinked. Once. Twice.
What a strange dream…
On some unspoken instinct, she flexed the impulse that extended her claws, but on her right hand.
And sure enough, out they came.
She looked around, and took in her surroundings. She was in a corner of one of the stables, the Portman meant for her use standing tall nearby—she recalled that she'd been doing last-minute checks on her mount for the operation (she'd done all her own maintenance on the Knightmares she piloted since fairly early on in her Academy days), and that upon finding that all was as it should be, and with all her effects properly packed and stowed, she'd elected to find a quiet alcove to take a few moments of rest. Her normal suit was half-on, but she hadn't donned the upper half, and it was bunched up around her waist, leaving her simple black cotton tank top and her sports corset out in the open, her hands bare and her upper arms prickling with gooseflesh from the chill of the breeze… And—
"Got 'em on both hands now, ne?"
Justine started a little, her hand flying to her collar's central ruby, only after a moment coming to the realisation that her best friend had been about to awaken her.
"Suzaku…" she gasped, letting the shock bleed out of her as her hackles slowly lowered. "…Y-yes, I suppose I do…"
"Hopefully they'll come in handy. No pun intended," said Suzaku, crossing her arms underneath her bust, fully clad in her own normal suit, which shared the same colour scheme as her Knightmare's custom paint job back at Ad Victoriam. "Anyway. It's time. C'mon, get suited. We're mountin' up."
"Right," Justine sighed as she stood from her seated position, reaching down and pulling on the top half of her normal suit (which, just as with the rest of their friends', had been customised to match her old Prytwen's palette), zipping it, and sealing it, making the garment conform to her body. She'd had to get all of them special-ordered, of course; protective of her own femininity though she was, she certainly wasn't going to risk a stray bullet to the thigh over it. Really, who thought making a life-saving garment like a normal suit not only gendered, but a glorified leotard, to boot, would ever have been a good idea? Putting that aside, she looked around at her surroundings, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "Where are the others…?"
"They've already mounted. We're waitin' on you," Suzaku replied. "And before ya get pissy, it wasn't like we didn't all know you'd've been ready to go before ya let yourself even risk dozin' off, so we all agreed it was better to let ya get a little extra sleep. We might need to look sharp, but you most of all."
"I wasn't going to get pissy," Justine huffed, running a suited hand through her hair to make sure all of it was in its proper place. "But all the same…thank you."
"Don't mention it," Suzaku shrugged, clapping her on the shoulder amiably. The two of them stood in silence for a heartbeat, listening for the howling wind and the driving rain, the sound of thunder cracking like artillery fire before subsiding into a decaying rumble. "Storm's gettin' there. And from the looks of it, shit's only gonna get worse…"
"It's just as Lisa predicted, then," Justine noted, and she took another deep breath. "Good."
"…Feelin' jittery?"
"A little," Justine felt no shame in admitting. "More restless than anything, though. I'll feel quite a bit better once we're properly underway, I wager…"
"Well, we don't gotta wait any longer," Suzaku observed. "Let's get to it."
"Right you are," sighed the princess as she rolled her shoulders and shook out her limbs. Glancing across the way, she noticed that there were a trio of Portmans that remained at rest in this walled-off section of the stables, which, when she laid her head against the wall for a quick rest, had housed twelve. One for Suzaku, one for herself, and there Jeremiah stood at the base of the third, suited up and waiting for her with a dutiful, steadfast demeanour, hands folded behind his back in parade rest. She swallowed the protests that came with that sight, that Jeremiah didn't have to wait on her and could have joined the others; for this was his job, and she knew he would be at least mildly offended by the idea of him being in any way derelict in his duties.
It remained a struggle for her, especially when she was just awakening, always alert but not fully filtered, not always, to continue to understand and accept that there were others who were just as devoted to her wellbeing as she was to theirs, even up to the point of having accepted a post that made that wellbeing a primary concern of their continuing occupation; but at the very least, nowadays she heard Marianne's voice far less often, and whenever she did, Milly's words about heeding those poisonous thoughts constituting a form of infidelity had yet to fail to silence them. Reaching up to place the tips of two fingers upon the ruby at the centre of her collar once again, more deliberately this time, she took those thoughts, her insecurities, and chose not to put them in a box as she would normally have done, but instead to rotate the cylinder of her mind, switching a new thought process into the proverbial chamber. She was in command, after all: the success or failure of this mission relied in large part on her ability to remain clear-headed. Speaking of which… "A Midsummer Night's Dream, or Antony and Cleopatra?"
"Neither," Suzaku replied, grasping instantly what she was getting at as they started off from the wall, heading towards their respective Knightmares. "'Let my thoughts be bloody, or be nothin' worth.' Or whatever."
"Of course you'd quote that part of Hamlet," Justine huffed, letting her hand fall back to rest at her side, and shooting her friend a playful scowl. "And it's 'O, from this time forth, my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth.' See how that more closely fits with the metre of the verse?"
"Fuck the metre," scoffed Suzaku, waving her off. "We've got killin' to do."
"Fuck the metre?!" Justine parroted, acutely scandalised. "Suzaku! Proper observance of iambic pentameter is crucial for any faithful recitation!"
"Ya want faithful recitation, use fuckin' original pronunciation instead o' received, why don't ya? I mean, if you're that fuckin' hung up on it," said the Honorary Britannian who happened to be her best and closest friend. "Fuckin' iambic pentameter… Why always fuckin' Shakespeare? Why don't ya mix it up, do a little Marlowe, for fuck's sake?"
"Because," Justine sighed as they finally came alongside the feet of their Portman models. "As I've said in the past—on multiple separate occasions, might I add—I am nowhere near as familiar with the work of Christopher Marlowe as I am with Shakespeare."
"Okay, then," said Suzaku, hoisting herself onto the winch of the stirrup. "What about Goethe?"
"Well, I'm not as fond of Goethe, to be quite honest," Justine replied as she did the same. "And now that I think of it, since when have you read either of them?"
"I haven't," her best friend replied cheekily, with an insufferably smug little grin. "I only know that they existed. You are just really easy to bait with that kinda shit."
Justine scowled—genuinely this time—and flipped Suzaku a rude gesture as the three of them all ascended up to their cockpit blocks together. Slipping off the winch and into the Knightmare's seat, Justine then manipulated the lever that slid her back into the block, swiping her key from the console as she swept past. Shrouded in relative darkness (it wasn't actually all that much darker in here than it had been outside in the stables, so her sight was already reasonably acclimated), she slipped the key into the proper port in a motion she'd performed maybe a hundred times before, which brought the central console flashing to life. She recalled the unit's unique passcode—X-4-5-8-X-3-G-9—and plugged it into the prompt window, thus unlocking the rest of the Portman unit's functions. As its systems booted up, she reached over to the glove compartment and popped it open, retrieving her military-grade earpiece comms unit from the open alcove and fastening it over her ear so that it cradled the curve of her jaw and held the microphone steady right below the corner of her mouth; and in a separate part of her mind, she did a quick search through her recollection, and began. Who's there? Nay, answer me! Stand and unfold yourself!
She reached down and gripped the control yokes, tapping the buttons that deployed the Portman's landspinners, as the earpiece connected to their shared encrypted channel. "This is K-1. I'm now online."
"Welcome, K-1," Hecate's voice greeted her.
"Did you rest well?" came Villetta's.
"Well enough," Justine replied; not wanting them to miss their window of opportunity, she coaxed the Portman forward, triggering the movement sensors that had the bay doors of the stables creaking open with the groan of well-lubricated, but nonetheless laboured, machinery. "Sound off!"
"Q-1, checking in," said Suzaku's voice.
"B-1, reporting," said Jeremiah.
"B-2, present." Villetta.
"N-1, ready." Odette.
"N-2, prepped and ready." Liliana.
"N-3, awaiting orders." Marika.
"N-4, primed and present." Sif.
"R-1, here." Lisa.
"R-2, same." Hecate.
"R-3, ready and waiting." Yen.
"R-4, awake and ready." Lindelle.
"Status on the P-Groups?" Justine continued as she swept out of the stables, Suzaku and Jeremiah at her heels as she came face-to-face with the entirety of their corps, a half-strength regiment-sized unit that numbered just over five hundred soldiers, who were now arranged before her view. The retinues that the families of all her friends could bring to bear on such short notice, a smattering of whom, she hazarded a guess, had never actually piloted a Knightmare Frame before in their lives, were arranged before her here; and now they were placing those lives into her hands directly—and those of her friends, her subordinates, which helped it all feel a bit less heady.
"All accounted for," replied Villetta.
The sky above was black, the clouds blocking out every last mote of even incidental sunlight, to the point where night had fallen hours before it was meant to, the base lit up only with blinding flashes as arcs of lightning flung themselves across the shrieking gale-force winds and the rain that fell in heavy sheets, like buckshot and bullets, pinging loudly against the metal plating of their mounts. Justine knew that she could hardly have asked for a more dramatic backdrop to her first proper sortie.
"I am not one to seek to bloat a speech with platitudes, nor am I one to simply break out into a fit of oratory whensoever the mood strikes me," Justine began, addressing now the host that had come to ensure that her friends survived this. "But there comes a time when speeches, whether to motivate or to reassure a host, are necessary. I believe this to be one of those times."
Lightning forked across the sky with a brilliance like a flashbang grenade.
A moment later, thunder rendered all into silence, with a percussive, booming crack that rang the ears and shook the ground, like standing right alongside an eight hundred millimetre cannon as it fired.
"I am unbloodied as a commander. This much is true," she continued in the echoes of the rumbling. "And my friends, my direct subordinates, the daughters of your lords whom you came to protect, are also unproven. I will not ask undue faith of you, for I am not one to ask more than one is willing to give. This is to be a simple operation, a sortie of small scope and limited ambition. That you stick to the route, and that you reach the other shore alive is all that I shall ask of you this night. We will make landfall under cover of darkness, we shall secure materiel promised to us, and we shall depart, ere we risk detection. This shall be the sum and summary of what we seek to accomplish.
"I do not ask for your faith," she declared as her brief speech came to its end. "I ask instead for your witness, that we may show you aught worthy of your belief. All hail Britannia."
"All hail Britannia," came the answering chorus from the household troops.
"N-1, N-2, you're to take your assigned P-Groups and scout ahead," ordered Justine, her transition from oration to command practically seamless. "R-2 and R-4 will take their P-Groups and scan for depth charges. Be ready to provide fire support if necessary."
"Yes, K-1," all four of them acknowledged at once, moving towards the downward ramp and into the ocean beyond, their assigned P-Groups breaking off from the assembled mass that stood in their aquatic Knightmares before Justine, and following along with their assigned commanders in short order.
"N-3, N-4, you're to take your respective P-Groups and serve as the rearguard," she continued, as the sortie at last began. "R-1, R-3, watch our backs and keep any enemies off our collective tail. B-1, B-2, you're to take your groups and act according to your discretion. Q-1 and I will go wherever we're needed. You two have command of the front and the rear respectively if we're indisposed."
"We hear and obey," said Villetta, as she and Jeremiah took their own groups and beelined for the dark and tempestuous waters that would cover their approach. Lisa, Yennefer, Marika, and Sif all followed suit, and with that, only Justine and Suzaku were left still above water.
"Well, I guess that leaves only one thing for me to say," Suzaku said into the almost liminal space of their newfound isolation.
"Don't," Justine sighed, already dreading what was going to come out of her best friend's mouth.
"Cowabunga~!" Callsign 'Q-1' cried as she launched herself into the sea at such a speed that her landspinners left skid-marks on the pavement. The rain would wash them away before too long, of course, but it was the principle of the thing.
Justine groaned; she had to pick her battles, and she realised fairly quickly that this wasn't one she was going to win. With a sigh, she flicked her wrists in a deft manipulation of the control yokes, sending her own Portman speeding into the churning depths. "Cowabunga it is…"
The day Philia Bernadotte had been lowered into her grave, she took a great many secrets with her; secrets that her own daughter had failed to coax from her in life, things that made Philia, for all the love and comfort and the safety that she did her best to secure for them both, a stranger to Lisa even up to the day of her death. Lisa had known this since the moment she'd watched the gravediggers pile soil onto the humble little wooden casket their means could afford, and she'd known then that the identity of her highborn father was amongst those secrets. It was a truth that she'd long since made her peace with—that far from meeting the man who had sired her, she would never even know of his identity. It had been knowledge that'd ceased to bother her before the first time she had even stepped into the foyer of Dormitory Block Bravo, and she'd only grown more sure that it was knowledge she could happily live her life never knowing as she'd learned more and more about the ubiquitous dangers that were endemic to the daily existence of Britannian highborn.
Her first sight of Horatio Gregory, however, re-opened that old wound; and suddenly, her mind was beset by the niggling, insistent, stubborn question: is this man my father…?
Justine, seeing this, had taken it upon herself to remind her, in her very bluntly charming way, that her open door policy had not ended on the day they graduated, but otherwise made no move to press the issue; the space Lisa was being afforded to figure this out and just feel however she might was something that she appreciated more than words could easily express, however much she was certain that Justine at least had an inkling of the nature of the source of Lisa's discomfort. Liliana definitely knew, of course, but it was by no means an easy task to conceal such a secret worry from someone who regularly shared her bed. Frankly, it was far more difficult than her experience with bodice rippers and romance novels made it out to be, which she'd learned early on—and to her credit, she didn't even attempt it this time. All the same, it was an issue that she tried her best not to think about; but the paradoxically peaceful maritime tableau of a world that lay just beneath the seething, writhing surface of the South Atlantic Ocean offered a relative silence into which her thoughts spoke unbidden. She was thankful that there were no depth charges or enemy contacts through the course of their crossing; with her mind being as burdened as it was, the chance that she might not have noticed an anomaly as soon as she otherwise would could be most accurately described (by her, admittedly) as 'beyond concerning.'
"Surfacing now," came Odette's voice, and Lisa could not think of it as anything but a mercy.
"Acknowledged," said Justine, her tone calm and even, an anchor for all of them, from which they all drew some measure of strength. Lisa took that strength, freely offered, and used it to push questions of her parentage out of her mind; Justine had told them all that they ought to expect to have been betrayed and double-crossed, and so that command came with a single accompanying affirmation within the confines of her mind: Showtime… "All units, prepare for the ascent. Keep your eyes peeled and be ready to move at a moment's notice; we aren't out of the woods yet, not by a long shot. B-2, fire off the signal."
Lisa nodded, for all that she couldn't be heard, and she was sure her friends did the same, feeling no desire to add to the answering chorus of 'yes, your highness' from their household troops. Gripping both of the control yokes with the confidence of dozens if not hundreds of hours of both practice and practical experience, she deftly guided her Portman up towards the surface, her contingent hot upon her heels.
"Response is 'two,'" reported Villetta. "I repeat, the countersignal is 'two.'"
Two, she thought. Then we have been double-crossed after all…
"As I suspected," Justine concluded grimly. "We will proceed with Option Dio—course correction is unnecessary. Continue the ascent. Four fathoms… three fathoms…"
The storm was raging still when at last they breached the surface of the ocean once more, a mass of strange, bulky Knightmare Frames emerging into the howling wind and the driving rain from out the sea's chthonic maw, and travelling up the wet sand and towards the thin strip of beach beyond. Once they'd gone into the shallows proper, Lisa tapped the buttons that deployed her stowed landspinners again, along with her P-Group, and indeed everyone else as they moved steadily up to the shoreline, the wetness of the sand allowing the wheels to catch into the clumped grains without losing too much traction. And of course, now that night had fallen in earnest, she called into her comm unit, "Setting onboard camera to infrared mode."
The red visor-like crest that had been set seemingly decoratively into the Portman's 'head' flashed crimson, then, and within the cockpit, she saw the world clearly even in the pitch dark, complete with heat detection—which didn't seem to pick up much of anything discernibly human or mechanised. "We're in the clear, as far as I can tell…"
"N-1, N-2, N-3, N-4, Q-1 and I will take point. B-1, B-2, be ready to back us up. R-1, R-2, R-3, and R-4, I want your eyes forward," Justine instructed as the last of them hit the beach, and they all began to form up into an orderly procession by her command. "Until we reach the transfer point, we're all still incredibly vulnerable. Remain vigilant. We're almost there…"
And so the moments wound on, tense and quiet save for the brilliance of lightning and the explosive crash of thunder, overpowering the rhythmic flow of the waves against the land. The trees that dotted the beach bent and leaned into the gales, and the rain would have made it even more difficult to see anything at all, if not for the infrared lens continuing to outline their course. It would have been a miserable slog if they had been forced to make the trip on foot, and for all that sitting within the silent, cushioned cockpit of this six-tonne machine of war, surrounded by a titan of metal and engineering wizardry, was a singularly eerie experience, she made sure to count her blessings that they ultimately didn't have to do this beach landing in the middle of a storm in the dead of night the old-fashioned way after all.
Eventually, they reached the tree cover with no sign of anything on infrared sensors—which made a great deal of sense; she sincerely doubted that even Hecate knew of any animal who might think conditions like these were favourable, after all—and they were able to trundle along through the undergrowth at a better clip now that they had the foliage to obscure their passing as it happened. It was a good thing, too; the Portman was built for submarine conflicts, and while it operated on land, its design prevented it from performing as well as its contemporaries. Even one of their Prytwens from Ad Victoriam would easily have been enough to completely and utterly trash a military-grade Portman model on land, and all those who had been on the Royal Force (as well as the two that Justine had brought to their number since, she didn't doubt) knew that fact very well, and were keenly aware of the relative fragility of these war machines as a result.
Thankfully, the time it took to travel to their destination felt much longer than it truly was; through a thicket and around a bend in the forest (the jungles were a ways up further north), there stood a grove of vacant Knightmares, twelve in number, standing as kneeling sentinels amongst the swaying, groaning trees—and further on, she could pick out the squat profiles of armoured personnel carriers, to bear the rest of their number abroad.
"Dismount," came Justine's command. "We'll leave the Portmans here. But we must be quick about this, and move with all haste. P-Groups, make for the APCs. Keys should be in the driver's seats. Hurry."
One by one, each Portman powered down as their pilots retrieved the trunks they'd taken with them and slid themselves free of their machines, rushing through the undergrowth towards the fifty vehicles that promised sanctuary from the wind and rain to which they were now so suddenly exposed. The household troops that had come to defend them and whose numbers made up the P-Groups were the first to dismount; in unspoken agreement, all twelve of them waited for their escorts to be safely away before they looked to do the same.
Lisa popped the glove compartment and brought the case full of her personal effects out from there, laying it onto her lap; and she pried a longer case from where she'd secured it underneath the main console, before powering down the Portman and ejecting her key. She popped the back of the block and worked the lever to slide her seat out, and though it was a bit awkward to hold two cases in a single hand so that she could safely ride the stirrup to the soft, spongy earth, she managed it all the same. Her friends joined her on the ground one by one, similarly burdened, and they all rushed towards the Glasgows that awaited them as the canopy shaded them from the worst of the rain and wind. It was a mad dash over roots and vines and a few scattered shrubs, picking their way through without light and deep in the oppressive pitch blackness of the night.
Lightning flashed, brighter than ever.
A wheezing crack preceded the rumbling thunder.
Slowly, lethargically, as though gravity only caressed the trunk, a great tree fell a short distance in front of her.
"Achn!"
Lisa recognised that voice. She yelled to be heard above the shrieking gale: "N-4!"
"Fuck!" came the answer.
Lisa changed course, rushing over to where she'd last heard her friend cry out. Sure enough, Sif's white hair and the bright burnished gold of her wolf's-eyes were easily discernible even through the storm. She'd been hit when the tree fell, and now her legs were trapped beneath the fallen trunk, with its end still smoking where the lighting had struck. Setting down her cases, Lisa moved to grab hold of the trunk, and she lifted with her legs and not her back—and yet, though she lifted with all her strength, she could only manage a half-dozen centimetres before her muscles screamed in protest, and her fingers gave out.
"Hell of a time for this shit to happen…!" Sif swore.
"It was bound to, with our luck!" Lisa joked back, trying her level best to lighten the mood of this dire situation. Then she adjusted her grip, with both hands upon the trunk of the fallen tree, and once again, she planted her feet, grit her teeth, and lifted…!
Suddenly, so abruptly that she was nearly thrown off her balance, the trunk seemed to grow much lighter all at once—and she turned her head in astonishment to see Justine's unmistakable silhouette a bit further down, on Sif's other side, her body rooted steady and lifting. A half-dozen, then a dozen, then a few more centimetres, and it was enough for Sif to crawl through from out under the trunk. Only once she was clear did either of them drop the load.
"Can you walk?" Justine asked, somehow still clearly audible despite not raising her voice all that much. "Can you pilot?"
"…I'll be fine!" Sif assured them after a moment. "But I don't trust my ankles right now…!"
Justine nodded, and without hesitation, she declared, "I'll help you. R-1, you grab N-4's effects and follow us."
"Yes, K-1," Lisa replied almost reflexively, nodding as she did so. She grabbed both of her own cases and held them in a single hand again, while she vaulted the fallen trunk, and picked up Sif's dropped effects as she passed them by, holding them in her other hand as she did her best to hustle after the two other girls. Justine was practically carrying Sif as she limped, the white-haired girl's arm slung over Justine's shoulders as they moved towards their destination: one of the three remaining Glasgow units, awaiting their arrival.
Justine helped Sif onto the stirrup, and Lisa handed their friend's effects back into her possession; in no time at all, Sif's Glasgow was active, and only Justine and Lisa remained out in the cold.
"You take that one," Justine said, indicating the nearer of the two Glasgows with a jerk of her head. She tossed a key to Lisa underhand, and Lisa caught it with ease, snatched it out of the air deftly. "The code is O-9-U-2-2-U-T-5. Get in, and catch up with the others. I'll be right behind you."
Lisa nodded again, dumbly, still acutely shocked by the sequence of events that had just recently transpired; by the time she'd thought to maybe question that switch of assignments—she was fairly sure that the far one was meant to be hers—Justine was already out of earshot. Shrugging, she shifted her grip, one hand on her suitcase, and the other on the weapon that Earl Asplund had commissioned for her, then turned to hurry towards the Knightmare she'd just been afforded, looking forward to once again finding herself safely ensconced within an armoured machine of war that provided shelter from the rain—amongst other functions.
Before long, she'd reached the waiting stirrup, and would have been drenched near to the bone if it hadn't been for her normal suit. She rode it up to the cockpit block, and slipped under the tarp that had been draped over the extended seat, both of her cases in her lap. Casting off the tarp with one arm, and once again pulling the lever with the other, Lisa found herself sliding at last into the armoured metallic enclosure of the Glasgow's cockpit proper. A few seconds of fumbling through stowing away both of her cases later, she slipped the key she'd been given into the proper port, and, when prompted, tapped the passcode she'd been given into the console.
The Knightmare hummed and shuddered to life beneath her hands as they gripped the control yokes firmly, guiding the metallic titan up onto its own two feet. Two button presses to deploy both landspinners later, and she was cruising through the tight quarters of the forest towards where the rest of her friends had gathered, monitoring the APCs as they swept off across the off-road terrain under the cover of darkness. It wasn't especially surprising when Suzaku was the first to notice her approach—in the time they'd known each other, Lisa had come to accept the fact that Suzaku just had that sense about her.
"Oi! R-1!" Suzaku called out over comms as she drew close. "Good to see ya. Where's K-1?"
"She said she'd be on my tail," Lisa replied, slowing her Glasgow to a stop. "There was a bit of an accident with N-4. We were held up."
"Yeah, she told us," said Suzaku.
"Thanks for the assist, by the way," said Sif.
"You'd do the same for me," said Lisa, shaking her head. "Or for any of us, for that matter. There's no need for thanks."
"All the same," maintained Sif. "Thank you."
"…Don't mention it," Lisa nodded after a moment.
"Sorry I'm a bit late," Justine chimed in as her Glasgow came up towards Lisa's from behind. "My apologies for the inconvenience…"
"K-1, please don't make a habit of splitting off from the group like that," Jeremiah seemed to plead with a sense of long-suffering exasperation. "It makes it that much more difficult for me to do my job."
"…You're right, B-1," Justine agreed, her tone acutely contrite. "I'll try my best to avoid doing that in the future."
"So, what's the plan?" Odette threw in.
"Right. Staggered intercardinal formation," said their captain, pivoting right back to business with a swift, unhesitating speed that would have given Lisa whiplash to try and replicate. "R-Group, stick close to the convoy. N-Group, you take the outer layer. B-1, B-2, Q-1 and I will be moving about between so that we can go to where we're needed, should the unforeseen occur."
"Roger roger," said Suzaku, and Lisa couldn't imagine she was the only one who rolled their eyes at that. "Let's get to it, then. We've got a lotta ground we gotta cover tonight…"
"What's going to happen with the Portmans?" Liliana asked, even as they all started moving to turn their Knightmares after the infantry they'd brought along with them. "Won't they give away our position?"
"Not before Shinozaki Sayuri and her cell manage to get rid of them, they won't," Justine answered. "Especially not for some time after the good baroness is removed from the board, so to speak."
There were multiple utterances of agreement, from Lisa as well; as it stood, they were already up against the wall, and the absolute last thing they needed was for the wall itself to stab them in the back.
Lightning struck and thunder rumbled on high, lighting their way and concealing their passage as they trundled along through the lush countryside of the Barony of Santa Cruz. As they travelled as the crow flew and kept their eyes peeled for enemy contacts, Lisa settled back into her seat and sighed heavily, every last thought of Horatio Gregory and the outstanding mysteries of her parentage driven from her mind in a single tremendous exhale. They remained vastly outnumbered and outgunned, and now they were going deeper and deeper into what was at least nominally enemy territory; and yet the relief of the moment was undeniable. For if there was one truth for them to hold to, one silver lining from which they might draw strength, it was that they had done what they set out to do, and were all still alive, none the worse for wear.
All in all, the first operation of the 588th Irregulars could well be counted as a resounding success.
Francisco Franco Hernán Cortés, Earl of New Castille and heir to the House of Cortés, was a young man of high birth who was known for his gregarious temperament. Rare indeed was the day that he ventured into a bar or tavern or bordello and emerged without at least five new lifelong friends in tow, and though all the ones he kept were dons at the lowest, it did nothing to diminish his reputation. Back home, people, whether they be commoners or highborn, knew him as 'El Caballero'; and though he did not know if his reputation for carousing carried on to the ranks of the Numbers, he also didn't rightly care. Everyone knew that the Sixes were little better than the mining and agricultural equipment they operated, after all; and even if a serving girl or scullery maid from that stock caught his eye from time to time (which they had), no one really cared. The indiscretions of youth, it was said: whenever his uncle heard of such things, the boisterous man guffawed and intoned, with an edge of nostalgic recollection, 'boys will be boys.'
His father, however—Bernardo Rodrigo Luís Cortés, Duke of Montero—was not so amused. He was a dour, severe, strict sort of man, who had (as he was only too fond of reminding Franco whenever the old man thought it time to lecture him) dragged their house from out of the pit of destitution and near-ruin that his father, Jair Pedro Estéban Cortés, had left them in when he dropped dead; and he expected that his son be at least as joyless as he himself was. And it was in one last attempt to make him into what he desired that Franco had been sent, with his friends and a detachment of their family retinue, complete with Sutherlands and a few tanks for the infantry, to go around the countryside of the Mountains of Silver, and ensure that all the noble houses and the dons of the area were aligned with the cause of Los Peninsulares, by any means necessary—a caveat which gave him the leeway to press them into service if he saw fit.
Don Diego de la Vega was one such unruly gentleman; in truth, his estate gave him such means that his wealth was more the equal of an earl than of a don, a vast stretch of beautiful vineyards afforded to him by way of catching his neighbours when they fell, and absorbing their holdings into his own. It was all way too boring for Franco to bother to commit it to memory; what did he care for how this old greybeard got to be so wealthy beyond the scope of his station? His daughter, Elena de la Vega, was a beauty, and a pleasure to look at; and Franco and his friends got to glut themselves upon the fruit of his vines. Fine wines and fields of cattle meant that he and his men were eating well, while they laid siege to the man's estate and did their best to intimidate him into compliance.
Or at least, that was how it had been for the past week; but last night, his father's messenger found where they were camped, and the weaselly little coward Franco's father had sent to do his bidding took it upon himself to make it clear the full extent of the duke's displeasure with the fact that he hadn't moved onto the other estates by now. It had spoiled the fiesta he and his friends were throwing that night, with the body of an entire cow roasting upon a spit and the wine flowing like water; and they were all of them in a very foul mood indeed when they rose the morning after, and knew that this was the last day they dared to spend here.
He ran a hand through his green hair as he looked upon the don's hacienda,his blue eyes straining against the rising sun as his handsome face was struck by the radiant light. He looked to one side, and then the other, and saw that all his friends were about as grim-faced as he felt at the prospect. Truly, the clean-up was the worst part of any gathering.
They were astride their Sutherlands right then, all of them: he had with him one thousand soldiers, all of whom were far more loyal to his father than they were to him, who stood in ordered ranks and armoured tanks behind him and his; and his own entourage numbered at a few dozen astride their Knightmare Frames. The sun struck the shivering grasses of the grazing-fields that they had done their best to strip of cattle, and only managed to make a dent, however sizeable—and as best the tall, strapping young nobleman knew, perhaps the sole redeeming quality of being forced to do this was the fact that he had no doubt in his mind that they looked damned good while doing it, all of them. He saw they even had a falcon amongst them, deftly streaking across the clear skies of the battlefield-to-be upon its noble, nimble wings. Such a bird of such clever cunning and illustrious repute could surely be nothing but a good omen, a sign of good fortune in battle, for Franco and his highborn friends both.
He lifted the megaphone he'd been given to his lips, and activated it. "Don Diego! I ask you again, won't you see reason and join us?"
"And where was your reason when you drank yourselves into a stupour on my wine, and butchered my cattle in plain view, hmm?!" came the old man's defiant response.
"Don Diego, we have you surrounded!" Franco tried again.
"Yes, that you do; just as you have for the past week!" the man declared again. "If I said 'no' even before you hooligans wreaked havoc upon my estate, what makes you think I'd say 'yes' now?!"
"Don Diego," Franco tried one more time. "If you don't, we'll be forced to attack."
"Then I'd advise you better do so, instead of wasting your time posturing, spoiled princox that you are!" Don Diego challenged. "We're certainly not getting any younger over here, while you and yours content yourselves with your preening and drinking! But take care, whelp, ere you find this old bull's still got life left in his bones!"
"…Have it your way, then," Franco sighed, letting the megaphone drift down from his lips. Then he turned, and met his friends' eyes. "Crazy old greybeard… Anyone fancy themselves a matador?"
There was a collective chuckle that rumbled through his friends like a wave. After all, the don had a retinue of three hundred, with about a dozen Knightmares who'd entrenched themselves in and around his hacienda; Franco's own soldiers were more than enough to roll over the man in an avalanche of steel bullets and tungsten armour, albeit with some effort. With such an advantage on their side, and coupled with the fact that the don's hacienda had very clearly neither been built for nor intended to facilitate such defences, it was a practical certainty that none of Franco's friends were particularly fearful of dying here.
"Alright, it's time to advance," the young nobleman sighed, putting his megaphone down in full. "I want us to attack in an orderly fashion. Groups of four to cover each other, with a hundred or so infantry and tanks coming up behind them. The Sutherlands will shield the breaching teams and lay down fire. Got that?"
"Got it, Franco!" called one.
"Hey, I wonder if the don's daughter is going to be up for the taking, eh?" called out another. There was a smattering of chuckles at that.
"Oi, there'll be none of that," Franco chastised his men. "But, if any of you want to stop by a few Six villages on the way back to make up for it, it'll be my treat."
"El Caballero strikes again," called forth another joking voice; and the laughing was bolder now.
"Alright, let's get this going," ordered the earl. "Gentlemen, start your engines—!"
"Aye-aye, capitan!" came the responding japes as they all lowered themselves into their cockpits, spinning up their Sutherlands and getting ready for the massacre that was ahead of them. Their Knightmare Frames rose from their knelt-down positions down the line, brandishing their assault rifles, and one by one they began charging down the field, the sun in their faces and the wind at their backs, with their infantry following behind, hot on their heels.
A crack rang out across the field.
Then another.
Then another.
In the space of maybe five to ten seconds, three of their Sutherlands went down at different points across the charging line—one by one, each had their hip assemblies erupt and explode, sending them careening down to the sides and tripping up their fellows.
Wait, since when does Don Diego have sharpshooters who can do that?! Franco thought, shocked.
Then, after a brief pause—twenty, twenty-five seconds at full tilt, still well out of effective range of the heavy turret emplacements that Don Diego had shown off so far—another three went down, the delicate machinery at their armoured hips erupting into flame, each with a crack like a clap of thunder. Here, too, did their speed mean that the sudden disruption sent them spinning off and careening into their fellows, as each took at least one other Sutherland down with them. Well over a dozen of them were down and out of commission, now, and they still had yet to make contact.
How are they doing this?! Franco asked himself. And more importantly, if they could do this for the whole time, why are they only just now using this weapon…?!
"Franco! Franco!" came an alarmed cry from a friend of a friend into his comm unit.
He winced at the shrill tone, but did his best to stay calm, and not to take his frustration with it out on the clearly very unsettled devicer who had just reached out to him. "What is it?"
"Behind, Franco!" the young man exclaimed. "They're coming from behind—!"
His last words were choked off with another thunderous bang, and static filled the sudden silence.
But his message had come through loud and clear, all the same. Franco did his best to turn around, a hairpin pivot manoeuvre putting his back to the hacienda even as he continued to charge towards it, and no sooner had he done that than did a handful of Glasgow-model Knightmares come up from behind them. And while a few Glasgows should have proven no trouble for their numbers of Sutherlands, not only did they have enemies now both in front and behind them in a pincer manoeuvre, but two of the Glasgows, one that had been painted stark white and the other black as night, were moving significantly faster than the others. The black one in particular was moving and weaving practically like a fucking Sutherland…!
"Knightmares! Knightmares behind us!" he called out to his friends, as he did his best to calm down and regain his composure. After all, a modified Glasgow is still just a Glasgow, he reminded himself. And Glasgows stand no chance at all against a Sutherland… "They're trying to surround us!"
Another three thunderclaps resounded. Another three of his friends were downed before they could respond. He still had no idea what was picking off his friends from such a distance, but it certainly couldn't have been any of the machines that now closed in on them, fearless and deft, as if they were themselves in some way ignorant of the sheer magnitude of the difference in unit performance… It was mind-boggling!
"About face!" he commanded, steeling himself against his inexplicable fear. "The good Don Diego has sprung a trick on us! We'll mop up the Glasgows, and then we'll turn around and take his hacienda!"
"They brought Glasgows?! Is this some kind of joke?!" asked another of his friends—or was this one another friend of a friend? Perhaps a little brother of a friend? It didn't matter, he supposed; they'd all laugh about this afterwards. And yet, he couldn't help but notice a similar uncertainty in that friend's voice to that which rested in his own breast. There was something about this twist, which in the ordinary course truly would have made for little more than a bad joke, that wasn't quite right, and it put him ill-at-ease; and it seemed that his friends felt the same sense of wrongness that he did. It was only a handful of Glasgows, and yet it was as if his instincts perceived that the full weight of the main Imperial Army, Gloucesters and all, were barreling down upon him and his friends in an apocalyptic, headlong charge.
And yet, despite the feeling which seemed to have them all in its grip, his friends, one by one, obeyed his command all the same, turning either in hairpin manoeuvres, or in wider swinging paths so as to accomplish the same effect. He counted the time, waiting for the gunfire to ring out again, bleeding more of his men; and come they did—except, this time, it was three of the now-unguarded tanks which erupted into impressive and devastating fireballs, as though…
As though they'd each been hit perfectly with an anti-materiel rifle…
But that was impossible! It couldn't happen! Landing three such shots in quick succession wasn't a level of talent he'd ever seen, or even been aware existed! What were the odds that such a freak of nature was not only here, at the siege of a provincial don's hacienda—not even nobility, but a gentleman, an old relic who was barely even a peer, a landowner for farmers, and other commoners like them—but also keen enough in their aim to have not yet missed a single shot?!
Almost angered by the absurdity of this, now, Franco gripped his control yokes tighter from inside the cockpit of his Sutherland, and cradled his appropriately-sized assault rifle in the fifth-generation unit's hands, bull-rushing the black Glasgow that seemed to be weaving in and out of any kind of reliable line of fire. It was evasive, almost as if it was dancing, as if it was the matador, and he the bull, and much like any healthy, red-blooded bull, the taunting inherent to the act enraged him. He brought the rifle up and opened fire on the obviously modified Glasgow in short bursts, just as he'd been taught, as he'd had drilled into his head until it was practically muscle memory, to squeeze the trigger, pause, and then squeeze again; and yet not one of his shots connected, the fourth-generation unit almost effortlessly seeming to dodge around his fire, as if it was all just yet more steps in its dance, slippery as an eel.
The strange black Knightmare returned fire, though, and with its speed, it was giving ground as quickly as Franco was gaining it—the shots pinged against his Sutherland's armour, connecting. He evaded, and the next burst connected again, as if he was being led into each fresh burst of gunfire. Swiftly, the assault rifle ate through his Sutherland's armour, and in an act of desperation, he moved to return fire in kind; and though he only succeeded in kicking up dirt and mud, at the very least it earned him a reprieve from getting his unit pin-cushioned. There was minimal damage to internal systems, but he could never be too careful: for while the Sutherland was far superior to the Glasgow, the assault rifles both units used were the exact same model of gun, and if he was reckless, he could take some real damage before his unit could close in, and make that difference mean something. In the short amount of time he had, he took a brief look to the side, and…
"How is this happening…?!" he cried aloud, watching helplessly as the rest of the Glasgows peppered his friends at middle-range, leaving them unable to close the distance because a Glasgow with dual axes was carving through his friends. They were heat-hawks, of course, weapons that were meant for Knightmare-on-Knightmare combat, for engagements somewhat like this one, and yet they shouldn't have been enough to do what they were doing—and indeed, a moment later, he grasped what was happening. The Glasgows were harrying his friends and their movements with suppressive fire, and that freed the white Glasgow up to cleave through men he'd known for years, months, weeks, even days! And to his other side, half a dozen more tanks were little more than slag. The fields were littered with his men's bodies, and from the hacienda behind them, it seemed the old bull and his own retinue had sallied out to join the fray…
This was bad already, and it was about to go from bad to worse.
He turned his attention back to the black Glasgow—!
The control yokes protested as he jerked them, careening in a nervous panic as the black Glasgow, with a strange attachment that reminded Franco of a harpoon gun upon its arm, filled his view.
"It's not very polite to ignore a lady when she's talking to you, señor!" came the voice of a young woman, high and musical and mocking, said aloud through the black Knightmare's speakers. He was just barely able to evade in the very next instant as the Glasgow's devicer fired both of her shoulder-mounted slash harkens at him point-blank, and as he recovered and moved to counterattack, pushing his Sutherland to its maximum output…!
A harsh, dull jolt shuddered through his Knightmare, all at once.
"And I'm afraid that's checkmate, señor," the girl's voice noted mildly. "Better luck next time…"
In the very next moment, his Sutherland unit's core sustained critical damage, and thus triggered the failsafe ejection mechanism; as he flew off towards the advancing ranks of Don Diego's household forces, Franco looked upon the full portrait of his and his friends' grand gallivant, now reduced to ruin…and when he asked himself how this could have happened, he came up blank.
And even when the don's forces pried his cockpit pod open, leading him out of it with the rifles of a half-dozen infantrymen trained directly upon him, Francisco Franco Hernán Cortés still had no answer.
Author's Note: I know I said that I'd post again on December 1, but I decided to move that up a bit for a Halloween surprise. I'll still be doing Friday releases, though, and this version of the fic will update at the same rate as the AO3 version. Coincidentally, I have a more robust author's note at the end of the AO3 version of this chapter, including a shout-out to Rendele, who's begun a gallery of their artwork that's inspired by this fic. My greatest possible thanks to them, and please go check them out. As always, lemme know your thoughts in the reviews, and you can expect Chapter 27 to go live on November 17.