"One minute can decide the outcome of the battle, one hour the outcome of the campaign, and one day the fate of the country."
- Alexander Suvorov
Percy lowered the binoculars, satisfied that the intel he'd received was accurate. Not that he'd had much doubt in the first place, obvious as a fleet of that size was.
"How are you sure they won't attack Windpath?" Shiro asked suddenly. Percy was reminded once again that Atlas' fleet would be reaching Windpath some time before Mistral, from the direction they were approaching.
"I'm not." he answered simply. "I'm just not concerned. There's no possible benefit to taking it, it'd just be a distraction to draw troops from the battle. If this were a more conventional war they could use it as a forward base or something, but even then digging in in a city filled with people who despise you isn't the best tactic. Regardless, they don't need it. They and all of their men fit in the sky. We know what weapons they have, and we know they don't have any that need to be deployed on the ground first."
"And if he takes it just to get to you?" Shiro pressed. "To draw you out, I mean. Attack you personally."
Percy shrugged. "He'll learn quickly that it isn't working and stop. That's the best chance I can give Windpath of staying out of it. What's the alternative, move our army there? That'll just make it a target. It might not 'fall' but win or lose it sure as Hades won't be in good shape when the battle's over."
"We have to win." Shiro told him. "Completely. On all fronts. If we force the airfleet to retreat but lose the battle on the ground, it'll all be for nothing and we'll be occupied by Atlas just as well. If we win on the ground but lose to the fleet, Atlas will just shell us until we either surrender or all die. If we win here but your revolution in Mantle fails, Atlas will just regroup and come back with the rest of their fleet. Even if the uprising succeeds in taking Mantle but they don't manage to take Atlas itself, Atlas will still have complete air dominance — they'll starve the White Fang and Asturias' out and within a matter of weeks Vacuo will be on our shores. Not to mention our own trade, or Menagerie's. Even if your revolutionaries manage to take Atlas it won't matter a bit if we lose either front here and Atlas' fleet just turns around to retake their city or occupies Mistral and seizes our weapons to turn against literal police militia in Mantle. We have to win entirely and utterly — we can't leave them a fleet to wield, can't leave their remaining ships a place to resupply, can't let them retreat and come back. It's all or nothing here, Percy. They win, or we do."
"I know." Percy said quietly. "I'm familiar with the concept."
The implication didn't go unnoticed.
"Well, that means you won… right? You're alive. You're here."
Percy hummed, his eyes resting in the general direction of where Atlas' fleet had been but his mind a place it hadn't dared wander in a long, long time. Everyone, everywhere, had to succeed or all would be lost. That was a familiar scenario, wasn't it? His life was filled with all or nothing gambits. Percy had to hold Kronos off at Olympus, or he'd destroy the gods' thrones and raze western civilization. The gods had to defeat Typhon, or he'd single handedly destroy Olympus himself. The Romans had to destroy Othrys, or… Percy still wasn't sure why that had been important. To distract some of the titan forces, he supposed. The titans couldn't just let Othrys fall or they'd lose before Kronos was powerful enough to destroy the gods. In a way, the Romans had been aiding in the defense of Manhattan by forcing Kronos to divert his forces.
But either way, that felt like forever ago. There had been times since then, too, the freshest on his mind being just before he'd fallen.
"No." Percy said faintly. "I'm not here because I won. I'm here to give everyone else a chance to win."
Annabeth had to make it out by herself. Seal the doors somehow, and get out.
Bob, Percy decided. That's how. He hadn't thought about the titan in… gods, since he'd seen him last. Percy tried to avoid thinking about the time leading up to his arriving here — the pit especially — whenever at all possible, and over the years he'd gotten very good at not remembering any of the events that had taken place there.
But regardless, Annabeth would have to make it out of the pit and unchain the doors in the pit, while Nico would have to lead the others to meet her and free the doors from the other side at the exact same time.
And elsewhere, someone would have to take the Parthenos — that damned statue — back to Long Island to prevent the war between New Rome and Camp Half-Blood, while who knows who would have to fend off war between the two sides long enough for them to arrive, however long that would be.
And then whoever was left of the seven — ragged, war-torn, and exhausted — would be left to head to the original Olympus to face Earth itself and her army of giants, with little to no help from the gods.
And that's why we don't reminisce on the past Percy internally chided. He couldn't remember the last time he'd cried — there hadn't been much reason to in the past few years — but thinking about his friends and their almost certain fate, he had to admit that for the briefest of moments there was a growing pressure at the bottom of his eyes.
Damn the gods and their stupid statue. Damn them and their squabbles, damn their refusal to do anything even remotely useful when it was needed, and damn their absolute lack of concern when it came to their kids.
But, Percy reminded himself, they'd been through worse. Or at least, Annabeth, Nico and he had. At least this time there was a plan — a way forward. A chance Nyx and Erebus would stick to their deal, that Bob would free the doors from within the pit, that Nico could reach Annabeth safely on the other end, find a way of getting the Parthenos back to America quickly, and then route Gaea with the help of the reunited gods. As far a shot as it seemed, he'd have quite literally killed for odds like those during the Titanomachy.
During the titan war there had been no plan, no long shot, no route to victory. The gods were losing to Typhon, his dad was losing to Oceanus, the titans were growing more powerful, he was losing the siege of Manhattan — a few dozen teenagers against tens of thousands of ancient beasts and deities, it was truly a testament to the skill and courage of the campers and hunters that they'd lasted as long as they had — and Percy would have to face down Kronos himself in a battle he'd known he had no chance of winning.
But they had prevailed. His father sacrificed Atlantis to stop Typhon, and Luke made the ultimate sacrifice to stop Kronos.
Yes, they had faced worse odds in the past and come out on top. Percy had faced worse odds and come out on top.
Percy let loose a low, quiet chortle that turned into a chuckle, and then momentarily a soft laugh.
Shiro's eyebrows furrowed together in a mix of confusion and concern."...Are you alright?"
Expelling one last amused huff which left behind only a small smile, Percy shook his head. "I'm fine. Just… got worked up over nothing for a second. Realized how silly I was being."
And he was being silly. Because here he was, complaining to himself that the seven had better odds than he had during the titan war, and what was he getting worked up about?
Mortals.
The younger, weaker him had fought titans and gods and giants which could erase the specks he was looking at with a glance, and he'd come out on top damn near every time. Was a lot of that a healthy amount of luck and an extra serving of teamwork? Yes. But Percy knew what he was capable of on the merit of his own abilities, he knew what he'd faced before, and he knew that Ironwood and his fleet wouldn't even be in the top ten one on ones he'd had in his life, much less wars fought. This was his third war. The first, he fought Kronos and the titans. The second, mother earth herself and her giants. This time? He fought a man and his soldiers. During the titan war he'd had a few dozen campers fighting by his side. During the Gigantomachy he'd had the rest of the seven. For this war, he had an army of his own.
Suddenly finding much of the tension relieved from his shoulders, Percy turned to Shiro and clapped him on the shoulder. "Let's go make sure everything's ready, yeah?"
A nod was all he received from a confused Shiro.
Percy walked back to the capitol with a pep in his step, suddenly feeling quite confident in the outcome of this battle.
Countless monsters, giants, titans, and gods had stacked the deck in their favor in their attempts to kill him, and Percy was standing all the same. Many of them were not.
Ironwood would be the same. Jacques would be the same. Atlas would be the same. Next to what he'd faced and triumphed over, they were nothing.
All he had to do was show them that.
The Chairman cut into his steak, juices pouring from it onto the small, white plate provided by the capitol's dining services. Plucking it with his fork, he brought it to his mouth and deliberately bit into it, pulling it into his mouth where he continued to chew.
"I need you to stay on the council, Gott." he finally spoke. The man across from him shifted uncomfortably. "At least until this unrest is over and the fleet is back. With everything going on already, if you resign on top of it there'll be pandemonium."
The councilman, Gott, smiled briefly but kindly, to a neatly dressed waiter who brought him a tall flute of water. He was the only other person in sight, the rest of the dining hall having been emptied. At Feuer's request, Gott guessed.
"I don't want to be part of any of this." he returned his attention to the chairman. "You captained this ship and you can sink in it, but I won't row for you any longer."
"Just a couple weeks." Chairman Feuer sat his utensils down and dashed at the corners of his mouth with a pristinely white embroidered napkin. "Days, even. That's all I need. You don't even need to show up to the meetings — we can release after all this is over that you'd been in recess since the initial vote. I just need you to stick around long enough for news to get back that Perseus is vanquished. It's what's good for Atlas."
"Good for Atlas, or good for you?" Gott challenged.
Feuer rolled his eyes. "Oh for Oum's sake, Gott, this isn't about me. This has never been about me. You might detest me, but I'm just the same as the rest of them. The same as you, whether you want to admit it or not. Sure I steered the ship but it was always setting sail and it was always going to end up here, with Atlas at war again, and there's nothing you or I could have done to stop that. It's in our nature. Two hundred years ago, the northern religious wars with Aquillia. A hundred and fifty, the succession crisis with Mistral. A hundred, the great war. Fifty, the faunus wars. Today, the White Fang and Perseus. We can't help ourselves. Mantle — Atlas — will always resort to war. Every major conflict as far back as history goes has one thing in common — we're always there, in the thick of things. Even when we have no reason to be, it's what we do, and you better bet that this time we have a reason. Our people have been chomping at the bit for an excuse since the faunus kicked our father's asses, no matter what our diplomats will tell you."
Gott deflated, "Gracieux, you can justify it to yourself whatever way you wish but these were our decisions. Whatever comes of this-"
Their attention was stolen by commotion at the other end of the room. A small group of Feuer's security brushed past the capitol staff and made a beeline towards them.
"There's been an incident, sir." The one in the lead — Feuer's chief of security, Gott recalled — announced. "We're addressing the situation, but we'd like to take you to the safehouse."
Feuer tossed his napkin down and promptly stood. Shooting Gott an apologetic look, he focused on his security. "Well, what's going on? What's got you worked up?"
"Unrest in Mantle." he didn't hesitate. "But we have reason to believe it's reached Atlas. Several of the transport stations between Mantle and the city are failing to respond to security checks. We have teams on the way but the remaining garrison is almost entirely in the lower city. We don't have specific reason to believe you're a target, but it's important we get you to safety in any case."
"Right, well." Chairman Feuer nodded to Gott. "Thank you for lunch. Please consider what I've asked." he said before promptly gesturing for his security to lead the way.
Gott crossed one leg over the other and leaned back in his seat. "You seem awfully concerned for a simple incident of unrest." he called at the Chairman's retreating back.
"Best to be safe." Feuer didn't slow his pace.
Mouth setting into a thin line, Gott watched Feuer approach the exit to the grand dining hall as the first sirens began to blare over the city.
"You're panicking."
"If you're the first out the door, that's not called panicking."
"Nervous?" Winter looked up to find Harriet's wide grin pointed at her from across the small room.
Tortuga slugged Harriet once, solidly, on the arm. "Leave her alone. Just because you're scared out of your mind doesn't mean you have to take it out on the new girl."
A couple of quiet chuckles filled the silence to reward their antics, barely outnumbering the eyerolls.
Deciding to ignore them, Winter went back to her final equipment checks. Aura booster? Check. Combat knife? Check. Extra dust? Check. Canteen? Check. Explosives? Glancing towards Tortuga, Winter verified that among the mountain of equipment on the woman's back was a bundle of dust charges. Check.
Kneeling down, Winter fought the shaking of the ship to retie her boot tighter. The squad was currently nestled into a hangar bay hanging at the bottom and front of the airship, which meant they got the brunt of both turbulence and anti-air. The ship's hull and hard light shields were doing a good job keeping them safe, but it wasn't a comfortable ride.
"TENCH HUT!"
Boot forgotten, Winter straightened to attention with the rest of her squad.
"Ace ops!" General Ironwood addressed them, voice raised though it needn't be. Winter guessed wherever he'd come from was louder than it was here. "I'm actively needed on the bridge, so I'll make it short. You know how important this is. All of Atlas relies on you. Follow your training, remember the briefing, communicate, and you'll triumph. Specialist Schnee!"
Winter straightened further. "Sir!"
"The codes. Plug this in as instructed, and you'll have full access." He said, handing her a short, black, plastic stick. She took it in short order
"Yes sir!"
"The kingdom is watching you all." General Ironwood looked at each of them individually. "I can't speak for it, but personally I'm damn proud. Now, you have the codes. Target has been spotted two hundred meters west of initial estimated location. Ace-ops, you're officially on mission."
KAROOOM!
Turrets on Mistral's mountainside began to loose their volleys. Most couldn't see far enough to tell if they'd hit anything, but there was no doubt as to what they were firing at.
Within Mistral, millions of untrained citizens clutched their rifles to their chest, holding their breath. At the base of the mountain in a miles-long network of bunkers and fortified trenches, a hundred thousand soldiers did the same. They knew the sound of their guns firing could only mean one thing.
Phweeeeeeeeee~
Sure enough, it came seconds later. A high whistling, like a poorly played instrument was being sent at them from above. For a small handful of seconds the whistling was the only audible noise, growing louder and lowering in pitch… until it didn't. Until the shells above them reached their destinations, and the only noise was the loud crash of dust shells exploding.
Orders were shouted, commands were given, but for the duration of the volley nothing could be heard except for the explosive eruptions digging into the ground and sending tons of dirt tens of feet into the air.
And then… silence.
As soon as it had begun, it was over. Leaders took what time they had to account for their men and the medics tended to the wounded, but most had made it through. The defenses had been prepared for years to resist this sort of firepower, and the men had been training just as long. They knew what risks awaited them. It would take more than a single volley of Atlas' guns to shake them.
KAROOOM!
The sound of shells being expelled by Mistral's turrets echoed from the valley behind them. Bracing themselves within their trenches, the soldiers of Mistral held their breaths and waited for what they knew was to come.
Phweeeeeeeeee~
Percy glared through his binoculars at the opening hangar bays of Atlas' ships from where he stood at Mistral's peak. Bullheads began to stream from them, and Percy knew their attack would soon begin.
"Is everyone ready?" Percy asked his scroll.
"As ready as they'll ever be." Shiro told him. "Atlas is beginning to set down their ground forces a few miles away. Should I order our defenses to fire on them?"
Percy pursed his lips. He could see what Shiro was talking about. Their transports — large airships meant to transport entire regiments of soldiers — were landing. They were tempting targets, to be sure. There were a few dozen of them, but any one of them would hold thousands of automatons. Automatons which would all be as good as destroyed just by taking out the ship.
But Percy knew they had hard light shields made to fend off swarms of grimm, and weren't as soft as they looked. A dozen rounds would still put one in the ground, but they had to win the war in the air first. Once Atlas' fleet couldn't threaten the defenses themselves, then they could focus on the ground.
"No, stick to the plan." he ordered. "And begin deploying the ships. They should concentrate fire on the airships, too, if they can."
"Got it, sticking to the plan. One other thing, you predicted they'd be landing a lot further back. Should we be in stage two by now?"
That was… true. Percy had thought they'd be landing much further back because as much as Percy wanted to focus on the air, the transports were vulnerable this close. In Ironwood's position he'd have landed much further back, but maybe the man would be okay with the large loss to his ground forces if it gave him that much more of an edge in the air. Or, Percy considered, maybe Ironwood just hadn't thought of it. As much as Percy hoped for the latter because it meant he was fighting an idiot, he suspected it was much more the former.
"No." Percy finally responded. "Wait for them to move. Remember, what we do depends on what they do. They could still decide to assault the trenches directly. Besides, those transports aren't heavily armed but they're still armed with cannons large enough to destroy tanks. Wait until they-"
"They're above!"
Blinking in confusion, Percy looked directly up. "Shiro? What are you talking about?"
"Part of the fleet is some three miles above the main fleet. We spotted it with the main fleet on radar, but I've just been told the upper fleet didn't stop where the rest did. They kept going, Percy. They're on top of us."
Narrowing his eyes, Percy concentrated his vision on the sky but couldn't see the second fleet no matter how hard he looked. "Are you sure it's not a faulty reading?"
"As sure as we can be, I'm told."
What were they trying to do? Drop a bomb?
"How many are there?"
"Three. All capital class."
Percy's confusion only grew. There were no bomber class airships, but he figured if one were to be adapted to a bomber it would be a transport. Three capitals was a lot of firepower to keep out of the fight. They had to have a reason…
"They've just begun to deploy their bullheads into a dive."
Glancing down to the trenches briefly, Percy saw where dozens of bullheads were already swarming like gnats. Some had been shot down already courtesy of the anti-air installments, but many remained. Atlas had already shown they were happy to deploy their bullheads from their main fleet, so that couldn't be it.
Shielding his eyes from the sun with a hand Percy went back to looking directly up, where he could now see small specks darting in-between the clouds at lightning fast speeds. Part of him wondered how fast they'd have to go to rip the wings off, and another part was currently cursing his past self for making the things so gods-damned good. Did he really need to sell Atlas bullheads capable of reaching speeds like that? Couldn't he have lowered the max speed a bit and still sold them?
The annoying part of his brain reminded him that intentionally making what he sold to Atlas worse than it could be would mean having to order the engineers in charge of the project — or any other project he decided to sabotage — to make it objectively worse, which would add, per project, another team of people that could potentially lead to his identity being compromised.
Shaking his head, Percy internally chided himself. Getting so sidetracked in the middle of such an important battle. Different world or not, some things never changed. Things like his ADHD.
Redirecting his attention to the rapidly approaching specks in the sky, Percy reached into his pocket to wrap a hand around Riptide and let the comforting familiarity of his pen ground his thoughts.
Head angled at the sky, eyes narrowed in suspicion, left hand holding his scroll to his ear and right hand in his pocket, Percy wondered just what the Hades those bullheads could be doing.
Later, Winter would think back on their descent from The Dutiful, General Ironwood's flagship, and wonder if she'd missed some sort of G-force tolerance class.
While her companions sat more or less normally — albeit, quite tense — Winter felt like someone was making a cocktail with her insides. The first several seconds of diving was akin to someone plucking at her intestines with chopsticks and pulling them out of her nose, while her blood rushed just behind them directly towards her head.
After an agonizingly long time of that her body returned to being on the same page — her blood wasn't trying to force her eyes out of her head, her innards weren't trying to spill from her mouth, and her lungs agreed to start breathing again.
She'd briefly thought (though she really should have known better) that the worst of it was over, and the rest of the flight would be smooth in comparison.
That notion was dissuaded a handful of seconds later when she was pulled harshly in the opposite direction. Instead of far too much blood pumping into her head she suddenly had none as it all rushed away from her upper body towards her legs. For a handful of terrifying seconds her vision began to fade at the edges, and Winter's delirious mind began to fill her head with worries that she was dying. Some moments after her entire vision had been consumed by darkness the pressure gradually lessened, and her blood began flowing back to her head and vital organs. Panting harshly, Winter took a few moments just to make sure she was alive.
"Red light!" the speakers crackled, Clover's voice roaring past the turbulence and the blood in her ears both.
Mustering what strength she'd recovered, Winter unstrapped herself and accepted Tortuga's hand to pull herself to her feet, acting on autopilot, clutching onto the handles on the roof of the bullhead for dear life. She was one of the few specialists in Atlas trained to drop out of a bullhead, but she'd never experienced anything close to this. Bullhead drops were supposed to be from bullheads at a constant speed calmly flying past the target at a reasonable altitude, not whatever this was.
Slowly, Winter's focus cleared and she remembered exactly what she was about to do.
The bullhead doors slid open to reveal that no, they were not cruising horizontally at a reasonable speed. They were not doing either one of those things. Peering out the jump door, Winter sluggishly realized that the G-force she'd just experienced had just been to pull out of a vertical dive into a forty-five degree one.
Winter considered herself pretty brave, but at the moment she was glad that Harriet and Elm were both jumping before her.
All too soon the light flipped from red to green, and Clover waved Harriet out the door "Jump! Jump! Jump!"
Winter noted with some self-assurance that even Harriet, crazy as she was, hesitated at the door for a brief moment before jumping. Elm did so for nearly a full second but soon enough she was out and Winter was up to the door, grabbing the doorframe's bar in a vice-like grip just below where one of Clover's hands anchored him in place.
"Go, go, go! Jump!"
Steeling herself, Winter used her grip on the bar to swing herself out of the bullhead and into open air. It was… peaceful wasn't the right word — there was still the rushing of the wind past her ears, and the shockwaves of anti-air shells targeting their bullheads, and the sounds of large guns both firing and landing far below her — but there was a calm that there hadn't been in the bullhead. She was in the open now. No more crazy twists and turns, no more pilots or straps or strange effects of being inside of a large container that had its own ideas about what direction it wanted to go in, out here it was just her, the wind, and gravity. In contrast to her experience inside the bullhead, this was almost fun.
Remembering the instructions they'd been given, Winter forced her arms against her sides and allowed her body to rotate downwards, accelerating her descent.
The ground approached alarmingly quickly, the large mountain which made up most of the city of Mistral and fed into the valley that contained the rest jutting out of the surrounding landscape. Belatedly, Winter realized she'd never been to Mistral before now.
As the seconds ticked by and her frayed thoughts returned to the task at hand, Winter decided she was close enough to the ground to begin slowing. Casting a series of glyphs before her, her descent began to rapidly slow just as she neared the ground in the plaza where the target — where Percy — was located.
Knees bending to catch her fall, Winter fell into a crouch and ripped off her diving goggles, expecting to see an army waiting for her.
But where there should have been dozens — hundreds, even — instead there was only one.
Percy turned, raising an unimpressed eyebrow. "You could've just called, you know."
Hope you all enjoyed :)
Next Chapter October 15