Adventurer's Notebook - Apocryphal Battles

GENERAL

I've always been a fan of the Rifts setting. One of the aspects of supporting Rifts that I've found lacking is the prospect of some quality novels to support any kind of 'word of mouth' campaign. The ability for Players to immerse themselves into the realm of the action of the Rifts RPG is a truly evocative piece I'd like to see rectified. And yes, there are novels out there; I'll site the fantastic Duty-Edge reviewed here at Scholar's Review #35. But given the scarcity of Rifts fiction, particularly compared to Dungeons & Dragons or Warhammer 40k, I decided to go ahead and start writing my own fiction pieces.

The first chapter for "A Scout's Honour" can be found in Rifter 85, with the hope that further chapters will see publication in future Rifters.

I've also set my sights on a few much grander projects. The Chi-Town Anthologies, which I reviewed in Scholar's Review #38: Tales of the Chi-Town 'Burbs, presents a great way to tap into the complex and often mature-themed setting of Rifts. I like the ideas of several short stories providing differing perspectives to the same events, but with additional details that gives the readers something new and interesting. So, without further ado, the first of several short stories for what I have dubbed as Tales of the Chi-Town 'Burbs Part 2.

Note: The thesis behind Apocryphal Battles is an attempt by me to rationalize something I've always had contention with in terms of the Siege on Tolkeen - specifically the unscathed forces of General Holmes and their grand entry to trigger the finality of the assault on Tolkeen proper. The following leverages a lot of military doctrine and theory on large-scale operations and logistical requirements. It is, however, a work of fiction.

APOCRYPHAL BATTLES

The mahogany doors to the Officer’s Mess swung shut behind him. An array of tables, covered by white cloth and surrounded by chairs with charcoal grey covers sat mostly empty. Only a small group in the far corner paid a glancing look to him as he slid onto a raised stool at the bar. The cufflinks from his dress uniform clinking on the surface. He caught his reflection in the deep red wood grain of the bar top, polished to a shine any drill sergeant would be proud.

The bartender came over came over with a practiced smile. He glanced knowingly at his collar dogs and stars along his epaulets. “What will you have, General,” he asked.

“Whiskey, and make it a double,” he answered.

The glass of amber was quickly placed in front of him, a small coaster slid underneath. A few quick wipes with a handy cloth removed an inadvertent smudge from the bar before he moved off.

Grasping the glass, he swung his head back, taking the liquor in a single gulp. He exhaled slowly and replaced the glass on the coaster. He tapped the edge of it a couple of times, cuff-links clinking on the wood; another two shots were served. Reaching into his tunic for his cred-stick, the bartender stopped him with a polite smile. He held a hand up in appeal. “No need, General. Your drinks are on the house. By order of the Mess Manager,” he added, pointing to a list of framed names and portraits, each denoted by rank. He sipped at the drink, savoring the aroma and the finish, nodding in ascent.

‘Perks of the job,’ he had told himself time and again. Had they bothered to check how much whiskey he drank, they might have asked if he’d developed a problem. Had they bothered to ask, they might have discovered his habitual response had been to bury himself in the bottle. Nobody ever asked.

“Set me up again then,” he ordered, gulping the whiskey once more. The bartender pursed his lips and paused for a second, otherwise professional enough to mask his emotions and to keep his thoughts to himself.

Monitors on the wall displayed the news anchor discussing various developments in the ‘Burbs. From the scrolling text at the bottom of the screen, he noted the debacle in Firetown. Yet another blaze had torn through that decrepit community of makeshift shelters amongst reconstructed habitation and commercial blocks. It had threatened to swallow it whole, a giant conflagration to match its namesake. He shook his head, sipping his drink. ‘Set fire to the whole thing, bulldoze it flat, and good riddance.’ Reports had also been filed from the neighboring Old Town of Mesa. While Mesa’s high walls and modern construction shielded it from the majority of the problem, complaints of smoke inhalation still publicly pressed the Internal Security Services for a firmer hand. What the ruling Planning Committee meant was ‘Come deal with the transient and migrant populations that had taken residence in Firetown.’ Just another example of the ungrateful and inhuman dregs that found themselves in the ‘Burbs. Life was particularly brutal living in the shadow of Chi-Town, living off the hopes of gaining citizenship to the mecca of humanity in North America. The one place where technology and human ingenuity counted for something, in a world otherwise ransacked by the explosion of magic and unstable dimensional portals that brought alien invaders and D-Bees.

The news report brought him back to the heady days of his youth. As a junior officer he had once been assigned to a patrol battalion that helped keep the peace in Mesa. Yet another one of the ‘Burbs surrounding the mega-structure of Chi-town, Mesa boasted a favored status with the Coalition States, and the CS Army and Psi-Battalion that patrolled there were keen to protect the humans therein. Surrounded by a wall over four stories high, Mesa was itself a miniature version of the giant, armored arcology of Chi-Town. Just because they shared the human-first sentiments of the citizenry of the Coalition States, did not mean they faced any easier path to entry. Some of the more influential of Mesa had sporadically expressed their own frustrations at the processing time. To this day they never realized just how well they had it. Protected by their high walls and relatively benign, supportive presence of the Coalition Army, their lives were better than most. Had they bothered to go outside of their own little paradise, they would have kept their mouths shut and accepted their fate, derived from the protection afforded to them. Instead, they kept looking upwards to the massive form of Chi-Town, with hopes of gaining citizenship.

The other ‘Burb he had been patrolled as a junior officer no longer existed. Battery Park, the site of a significant insurgency years ago, boasted neither a battery nor a park worth the name; the I.S.S. had failed to maintain the peace. His platoon of ‘Dead Boys’ had been part of the army’s pacification operation that eventually led to the devastation of that entire community. The remnants were demolished into piles of dust, ash and rubble. The beasts and D-Bees his platoon had fought proved to be everything his training had made them out to be. He understood that most of the D-Bees had come to Earth unwillingly, dragged through the Rifts or escaping some hellish experience on their home world, but that was where his compassion ended. Submit to Coalition States rules and continue to live in the shadows of Chi-Town; otherwise face the consequences. In Battery Park, humans had fraternized with magic users and the non-human. Cabals of black magic and dark, nefarious influence peddlers had taken root. A festering infection in the heart of the Coalition States. Security forces and innocent bystanders alike were caught in the crossfires, slaughtered. Humans and D-Bees representing dozens of species died throughout that campaign. Over six weeks of patrols and gunfighting from room to room or across alleys had finally surrounded the malcontents and the aliens. Their failure to surrender had sealed their fate. He shrugged knowing that had they surrendered, they would have faced the same consequences.

This microcosm of conflict represented much of what the Coalition States stood for. He firmly believed humans had been stolen of their birthright with the coming of the Rifts and magic. Whether mistakenly brought here or part of a deliberate migration through the dimensional portals, Earth was now host to hundreds of differing species, most of them hostile. Brought about by an ancient catastrophe, Earth now boasted thousands of ley lines, great ribbons of magical energy that traversed the globe. At the intersections, nexus points ripped open tears of the fabric of reality, breaching space and time, allowing others to invade. Ancient texts and video history showed how humans faced slaughter in the hundreds of millions during that apocalyptic timeframe. Those that survived the initial devastation fought desperate battles against seemingly endless tides of monsters, demons, and unspeakable horrors. The upheavals of hurricanes and ley line storms scoured the landscape, massive tsunamis eradicating hundreds of millions more along the coastlines. Only in the continental heartland, the Midwest of the old American Empire, did humanity find itself capable of staunching their losses, building and securing a much smaller perimeter. That long-forgotten country was known only to a select percentage of the population, even then mostly as an apocryphal idea of what humanity once considered the dominant nation among peers. Despite American military strength, survivors had been a miniscule fragment of the whole. Marvels of technology and human ingenuity found itself matched against demons, monsters and other beings that could hold their own against the weapons of war brought to humanity’s defense. Magic, once thought to be the purview of charlatans and used to exploit the gullible, was resurgent and no longer the tools of purveyors of sleight of hand. The ley lines and nexus points granted phenomenal powers to human and inhuman alike. Spells wrought from that atavistic energy turned individuals into devastatingly powerful weapons of war; they no longer needed armor, or the benefit of advanced robot mecha to deal out death and destruction.

Built on the bedrock of that once-powerful nation, the Coalition States remains constantly vigilant to maintain control of their borders and keep relative safety. The region spanning what was once northern Texas, along the Mississippi River, and up across Lake Superior was now the home to one of the last bastions for Humanity’s survivors. Leveraged of those ancient weapons, uncovered caches of mecha, weaponry, and production complexes once buried under layers of ash and vegetation, Humanity had emerged from the hundreds of years known as the post-apocalyptic Dark Ages. The Coalition States was a bastion for humans, with a ‘humans first and always’ policy. Little time or consideration was given to the non-human, however they found themselves here. The Coalition States had long ago forsaken the alien, who so often was directly associated with or used magic. This meant spell casters and their ilk were persona non-grata as well. These decisions were so much easier to make when facing monstrous demons, or something so outlandish in nature they could never communicate with humans, let alone co-exist. Dragons had found their way back to Earth, Atlantis had returned as home to all nature of foul and monstrous creatures, while vampires ruled the old kingdom of Mexico, and an insectoid life form known as the Xiticix had taken root in the northern regions once known as Wisconsin and Minnesota.

For the Coalition States, nothing had been more of a clear and present danger to their existence than the magic-loving, alien supporting colony of Tolkeen. Built upon the ruins of Minneapolis, Tolkeen benefitted from a host of nexus points and various ley lines to fuel their magic, to field their magical technology. And they were right on the northern doorstep of the Coalition States. As dictated by the Emperor Karl Prosek II himself, Tolkeen had to go. With a vast array of Army Groups, conscript soldiers from the ‘Burbs and surrounding areas were promised fast-track access to citizenship if they survived. This created a bulwark for the regular forces of the Coalition States’ war machine. Developed on years’ of skirmishes and intelligence gathering operations, the decades-long détente with Tolkeen had culminated in a massive campaign that tested magic versus technology. Others took note and keenly observed for lessons learned. The armies thought they knew magic and how to counter it; the CS learned their lessons the hard way. They found magic nowhere near the pushover the propaganda had led them to believe. They took its share of bloody noses; but they punched back, punched back hard. Not all the people of Tolkeen were backstabbing wretches, but those who had turned on their own species by actively supporting aliens and the magic they wielded were especially hated. But they had made their choice, ultimately sided with those not from Earth. And those from the other dimensions, they had come here to colonize, to make a home on Earth. That home would come at the expense of the humanist worldview, and the plans the CS had to expand their reach, to reclaim their birthright. The Earth.

Tolkeen had to go. And with a wry smile to himself, he self-affirmed that his efforts had been the straw that broke that proverbial camel’s back.

When future generations read about the Battle of Tolkeen, the name General Jericho Holmes would forever be synonymous with the downfall of that city. It was his Army Group that had faced the heavy assault waves along the northern reaches of the Mississippi. Tolkeen’s magic robotic vehicles, the Iron Juggernauts, supported by dragons and other massive beasts yet to be named, were a scourge for his foces. The Juggernauts were given form and function by the foul magics that created them, the mystical energy harnessed into a tragically effective war machine. Alongside the Juggernauts, a host of other creatures were supported by a myriad of magic wielding humans and D-Bees. If it hadn’t been for his reconnaissance forces and their ability to scout the Tolkeen approaches and provide alternate routes, his forces would have been pulverized. But escape they had, and for all appearances, Tolkeen forces had driven his Army Group north. They claimed this push into the edges of the Xiticix territories would be the end of Jericho Holmes and his forces. He had obliged the Tolkeen forces, but not without doubts.

At the end, his forces had swung south to decimate the Tolkeen defenders. Official records placed General Holmes’ Army Group at around three-hundred ten thousand survivors; this, from an original four-hundred thousand soldiers. He had been proclaimed the white knight, savior of hundreds of thousands of other CS soldiers from certain death, instrumental in obliterating the critical infrastructure and defensive mechanisms Tolkeen. To be sure, they defenders had reason to trust their magics; after the success of the Sorceror’s Revenge, Tolkeen’s armies were at a high point in the war. Bitterness and low morale had visited the armies of the Coalition States, which would only compound and threaten to tear apart his regimented forces in the weeks to come. He had led them from likely annihilation by the Tolkeen defenders to a running battle, both with his rear-guard to defend and hold off the Tolkeen forces harassing them, and the vanguard that scouted for avenues through the outer edges of Xiticix territory.

Back home, reporting on the war effort, observations by independent pundits, even the canon of official military records and historical accounts, had all gotten it wrong. They had written, reported, and recorded on what had transpired, and they had all produced a fallacy that had become a myth to this day. A myth that stole the smirk from his face. A myth that had been so very wrong.

His decision to enter the very outskirts of Xiticix territory, their massive hive complex built on the ruins of Duluth, developed immediate consequences. ‘The insectoid invaders were the lesser of two evils,’ he had repeatedly told himself. Over the following weeks of unrelenting combat, and months before his return to Chi-town as a celebrated war hero, Jericho often wondered how things might have turned out had be doubled-down and formed a counter-attack into Tolkeen forces instead. Had he struck back, could they have hoped to ravage Freehold, the vaunted city of the dragon kings? To this day that decision plagued him. It remained the fuel for his nightmares.

A group of junior officers barged through the mahogany doors, their boisterous enthusiasm heard well before their arrival. Jericho nodded to the bartender for a refill, noting the boyish charms of the youths as they paraded about. Like peacocks, strutting in the finery of their dress uniforms. He grunted, recalling his time at their age. Prepared to conquer the world and return humanity to its rightful place controlling the Earth. He had learned several hard truths through repetitive encounters and battles with mages, creatures of magic, demons, and anything looking to push humanity down the ladder a peg or two.

His mind flashed to Major Frances Dowerty. A rather attractive young woman, her uncanny intellect backed up by a quick wit did well to stave off unwanted criticism from her peers and superior officers alike. Their sojourn through the Xiticix territory had largely succeeded due to her leadership, and the infatigability of her research teams. After showing several key insights at the outset, he had seen to it she and her teams were assigned as special advisors to his headquarters. And still it wasn’t enough to stave off the massive losses of life and military hardware.

Those that made it through that meat grinder of an advance, emerged a new breed of warrior fighting on behalf of the Emperor. Battle fatigue was nearly universal. Twenty percent of them suffered significant mental stress-related injuries. Another ten to twelve percent were phobic of Xiticix, or insects and arachnids in general. He couldn’t blame them. The thought of hiding in the armored bulk of his command APC as those damned bugs swarmed them, crawling, scratching and chittering as they ripped off armor plates, antennae, weapon mounts or other ancillary equipment, it all still affected him. It was all he could do to contain his own emotions, especially in front of the command crew technicians. But there would always be one Xiticix Warrior that would get lucky, a claw punching through a viewport, or catching the edge of a door frame. Once the shell was opened, they would make quick work of the poor souls within. Despite his order not to fire, could you blame them for defending themselves? Then the bloodbath began in earnest.

The thought sent a shiver down his spine.

“I can raise the temperature, if you like, sir,” the bartender offered, before he silently withdrew from the flat stare. He clearly noticed the cold sweat on Jericho’s forehead and the dress shirt soaked at the collar.

One of the junior officers, goaded by his comrades, moved up to speak. “General Holmes, I’m Lieutenant Parker. It’s an absolute honor to meet you, sir,” he said, hand extended.

Jericho turned on his stool and shook his hand, a signal for the rest to come forward. He spun all the way around, keeping the drink in his hands as an excuse to avoid further inane hand-shakes. “Where you boys stationed?” He started rhyming though a series of small talk questions every general pretty much memorized for these occasions.

Parker and his fellow junior-grade officers, stationed in the Black Talon Advanced Training cadre, just finished their initial training on advanced Jet Cycle and SAMAS power armor exercises. On furlough for a week, a trip back to Chi-Town to see families and friends occupied the space between courses. He skirted their questions about the Tolkeen offensive and the Xiticix, giving them a benign “security clearance” excuse, but it mollified their curiosity.

“You hold on to that attitude, and protect each other. Goes without saying, as an integrated team you stand a much higher chance of coming out of any battle alive. Don’t take your tech for granted. You think you can tear up the skies and kill every last demon you find? Some of them out there developed their own abilities over eons of natural selection. Claws and teeth care little for your armor. So, watch after each other,” he added in closing.

They moved off, joking amongst themselves and reveling in their chance encounter with a true-blue hero of the Coalition States. Few officers of their rank or experience got the chance to interact with a three-star general. He didn’t begrudge their enthusiasm, but it still cast a pall over his already darkened mood.

For all those boys knew, three quarters of his forces had lived through the ordeal. The truth of it, however, was never to be spoken. Brilliant reconnaissance and intelligence, reinforced with Major Dowerty’s technical expertise, identified the pheromone routes the Duluth Hive used to follow his forces. The noise and physical effect of so many vehicles moving through the region was unmistakable even from miles away. The smell of all that mechanical equipment could not be overcome, regardless of how much viscera and fluids from the dead Xiticix they smeared on the vehicles and their armor to try and mask them.

Long range reconnaissance and aerial patrols gave them ample warning. At first that had been enough. As the Xiticix approached, flanking forces to the north held them off. Missile salvos, layered by heavy vehicle and robot-borne weapons, and finally a cavalcade of small arms fire killed hundreds if not thousands in every wave. At the start, they only started attacking in small, manageable groups. The concentric, defensive firing peeled away the Xiticix Warriors, their dead littered across the landscape. The first week seemed to prove his theory; his forces were too far south to entice any concentrated offensive. On day eight, it was as if the entirety of the Duluth Hive had descended upon them. The flanking Division sent a warning early in the morning. By noon, reports confirmed that ever more swarms flooded the skies. Radar and combat computers lost track. Groupings of hundreds if not thousands were reported. Xiticix piled up around their defensive firing positions. Before sunset of the eighth day, his forces were running out of munitions and missiles so critical to their defense, and the aliens had broken through in a frenzied state.

His staff had recommended and tried all the conventional wisdom. Robots stood still, APCs and tanks shut off their idling engines, armored trucks carrying troops buttoned up. The bugs had a method to their madness, and it was a simple question of numbers, and human morale. The Duluth Hive never seemed for want of more of the common Warrior insectoids, and they had catalogued in detail a series of other more esoteric bugs. The Xiticix hivemind was set to rage and aggression; their death pheromones permeated the landscape. The northern flank had become a constant, singular line of conflict. Formations that rotated in had to fight their way to link up with troops being relieved. Always there were more casualties; always the Xiticix came. They were a miasma of destruction with no sense of self-preservation. All his forces could do was continue killing as many as they could at distance, before the aliens brought themselves into vicious melee.

Soon the adage “logistics wins wars” became a nasty truism. When operational stock of missiles ran out, they tapped into the reserves set aside for the assault on Tolkeen. When those were expended, they doubled-down on heavy, long-range energy weapons. Sky Sweeper anti-aircraft tanks became indispensable, with over eighty percent of his units permanently deployed to the northern flank. They were only outdone by the Abolisher pattern robots, a model once thought obsolete that once again came into their own. Resembling a behemoth skull with legs and arms, they dealt out punishment from a crown of six autocannons. Each blast brought down half a dozen Warriors. The ammunition supply for their shells ran out shortly after missiles.

Maintainers worked day and night, leapfrogging from one defensive maintenance hide to the next. Surrounded by protective robots and tanks, diversionary patrols of SAMAS and Sky Cycles kept the Xiticix from tracking these critical locations. Slapdash repairs and rearmament meant they stood a chance. When powerpacks died and small arms needed recharging, whole banks of nuclear power plants from unsalvageable robots and vehicles were jury-rigged into mass-charging stations. No soldier went without a full complement of fully charged E-clips. The majority of the logistics and combat supply chain found itself in the center or the southern flanks. Without resupply or lines of communication back to the Coalition States, they were absolutely cut-off. Conventional wisdom called that a death sentence for any military force. Given his decision to move into the Xiticix Hivelands, nobody dared accuse him of succumbing to conventional wisdom. Had they bothered to ask, he would have told him it was a simple choice – he had no other option available.

Medical stations had become another hot zone. Doctors, nurses and field medics worked non-stop to save and recover as many as they could. When bandages ran out, they hijacked a mobile bath and laundry unit to take in fresh water from the streams and lakes. Bandages were now boiled and cleaned for repeated use. He recalled the sight of the flushed wastewater, a tailing pond-sized reservoir of sickly, frothy pink liquid. The smell of it was bile inducing, something the Xiticix soon found unalterable in their searches. Those medical personnel did some truly heroic work, even going so far as to refurbish cybernetics and bionics in what his medical advisor labelled as ‘meatball surgery.’ Vehemently warned against it, he had insisted on witnessing the process. His appetite had only returned forty-eight hours after. Nightmares of what he had witnessed and experienced still forced him awake at nights, covered in sweat, sheets and pillow soaked through. The haunting imagery just fueled his hatred for the alien and forces of Tolkeen for putting them in this state.

Nearly a year after declaring victory, General Jericho Holmes sat in the lap of luxury, sipping however many whiskeys served to him in one of the finest Officers’ Mess in the upper towers of Chi-Town. The hero once again tapped his empty glass. The bartender poured and slinked away without making eye contact. He knew what it looked like to the bartender. Drinking in excess, trying to drown his nightmares. So far, nobody seemed to care; nobody noticed anything past the façade put on by the Hero of Tolkeen.

The newscaster switched to preliminary news on the celebration of that victory, with still images of CS parades, troops and weapons of wear gleaming in the sun on the paved parade route, mages flashing explosive energy bursts getting cut down by laser blasts, the CS grunt waving his comrades forward. Then, the inevitable. His stock portrait photo, the ‘glory shot’ as the troops named them, and then a cutaway to a swarm of Xiticix getting mowed down with constant weapons fire. He frowned, actually remembering that particular battle. A trio of Cyborg Shock Troopers had saved his life, rushing into melee with the Warriors and other variants that had descended on Holmes and his command crews. Those Troopers had been marvels of death and destruction. Machine shot apart or rend the Xiticix to pieces. By the end of things one had fallen, the remainder covered in gore and the putrid innards of dead bugs. He had personally awarded them for it. The fallen comrade’s parts were immediately repaired and recycled into another soldier’s bionic conversion, his body’s injuries too significant to treat. Those few selected for this second chance turned into maniacal killing machines.

Jericho listened as the news presented several upcoming events in order to commemorate the Coalition’s victory over Tolkeen. ‘Oh, if they only knew.’ He took another sip. The campaign had been a debacle turned into a public relations coup. The truth of it was the kernel of a secret plan he himself had presented to Emperor Prosek’s son and the Joint Command. A five-year cover up had taken place to make the losses of his Army Group slowly disappear. A battalion of clerks and specialists were squirrelled away, given the highest security clearances possible. Even the term for their level of clearance was in itself a classified piece of information. Tasked with collating reams of surveillance information on the families of the dead, they responded to inquiries and correspondence with a mix of official letters with updates, facsimiles of written messages in the victims’ own style. They were tasked with keeping hundreds of thousands of sons and daughters, fathers and wives, or myriad other possible connections, kept alive, from a distance. Continued postings to mop-up Tolkeen, elsewhere throughout the Coalition States such as Iron Heart or Lone Star, perhaps promoted and sent on a classified mission for months without the possibility of contact. These efforts hid their deaths, officially reported months or years after the fact and always in the line of duty. Just shy of one-hundred thousand deaths were publicly known about, while another eighty-thousand would be lost during Tolkeen Occupational Forces sweeping the ruins for pockets of resistance. The rest would be handled in groups, laid out as victims to enemies of the state, reinforcing the messaging the Emperor imposed.

It had proven itself a brilliant piece of propaganda, built on his efforts on the road to Tolkeen. He had kept many of his formations intact, despite being rendered combat ineffective after thirty percent casualties. His Chief of Staff had nearly collapsed managing unit rotations with limited radio traffic. Somehow, he managed to hide most of the losses until they were at less than half their starting strength.

The profound looks of skepticism when he first proposed the cover-up had been replaced with satisfied nods. The public approval by Colonel Lyboc had provided an unexplainable level of support. How that wretched urchin found himself in such a position of influence had confounded more than a few of his peers. By the end of the five years, the list of deaths would come to resemble the three-hundred sixty thousand that had perished on their way to Tolkeen and during the final assault. For his efforts in establishing the network, the Emperor had seen fit to award him yet another medal. The row of them hung neatly on his tunic, a visible recognition of years of dedicated service with prodigious results.

He, along with close to thirty-seven thousand survivors, had become the stakeholders of expertise in the next battle front. With the defeat of Tolkeen, the CS now looked to consolidate and reconstitute its war machine. As the highly classified document he had once read, the Emperor had now set his sights on demolishing the Duluth Hive. The strategic aim was to find a way to connect the Coalition State of Chi-town, which encompassed the lower half of the former state of Illinois and the entirety of Iowa, along the coastlines of Lake Superior, to the Coalition State of Iron Heart, which abutted the northern coast of Lake Huron. Control of the Great Lakes was the key, and open maritime shipping lanes were crucial to the survival and expansion of the Emperor’s vision for humanity.

The survivors of the Northern Army Group had been bruised, battered and torn over the harrowing trials they had experienced. Having faced off and survived against both alien menace and magic-wielding traitors to Humanity, they were the sharpest and most battle-hardened troops across the entirety of the Coalition States. That, or they were balanced on a knife’s edge as they fought to keep their emotions and experiences in check. Surrounded on all sides by friction points, the Coalition States remained flush with the victory over Tolkeen. Propaganda pieces and a host of parades made sure to reinforce the point. His campaign to hide the deaths of hundreds of thousands had become a vital cog to the machinery of that effort. The Emperor, building on this excitement, looked to double-down on the success and their influence over North America. Next on the chopping block, the Xiticix threat.

Jericho Holmes dreaded what his role might be. Undoubtedly the most experienced among the General staff, the thought of planning a campaign of that level did nothing but reinforce his anger and anxiety. A completely alien species with no comprehension of self, he had personally fired his rifle and sidearm more often in that single push than he had throughout his entire career. He had crushed enough bugs under the proverbial heel of his boot to last a lifetime.

“General Holmes,” a new voice said politely, breaking him from his reverie. “My apologies, sir. I’m Colonel Sorrell. I’ve been sent to bring you to your meeting. We have a car waiting outside.”

“We’re no longer meeting in the Palladium Complex,” he asked, vaguely indicating off to the side.

“No, sir.” Sorrell made a gesture to the bartender who dutifully slunk away, smartly ignoring the conversation. “Both the location and participants have changed,” Sorrell added.

Jericho felt his stomach drop. A wave of queasiness rattled him for a second, the bile in his throat risking a violent reaction. He cleared his throat a couple of time, fighting to regain his composure. “I thought this was a back-brief to the Command about my current portfolio.”

“That too has changed. Things are moving rather quickly, sir. We should be leaving,” he explained as he moved to the side, an arm extended back to the mahogany doors.

Jericho left his stool, pulling his tunic sharply to smooth it out. The bartender placed the cap next to a large aluminum mug, the contents still steaming. Sorrel grasped the mug and affixed the cap. “You take your coffee black, correct?”

The hover car was waiting for them by the curb. Overhead, the sun shone brightly, more so than Jericho was comfortable with. Despite his squinting, he noted the car already displayed the pennant for his rank. An aide-de-camp with the gold piping hanging from their epaulet held a door to the rear compartment open. Jericho returned a salute and climbed in. Sorrel took the seat next to him. As the doors shut, a faint hiss sounded, the shaded windowpanes turned completely black. He sipped at the coffee, contemplating the opaque windows and finding an obtuse connection to the method he was being handled. As a senior general of the Coalition States, he hated to be handled. Hero or not.

Sorrell handed him a file folder. It was held shut by a black band of paper, the words ‘For Eyes Only’ and a security clearance code even he was unfamiliar with. A raised eyebrow, he took a long sip from the piping hot coffee. Ripping off the black band, he opened the file and instantly sobered up. A steady hand reached for the coffee again, his mouth suddenly dry. He loudly swallowed another gulp, eyes scanning the promulgation letter that described the file folder’s contents. He scanned the paper, eyes dancing over the words. His heartrate rose as he read the signature. Emperor Karl Prosek’s handwriting flourished at the bottom of the page.

“Undoubtedly there will be questions,” Sorrel remarked. “I’m at liberty to answer some, within parameters. A briefing has been arranged for your arrival.”

Jericho opened the folder to the first page. “I’ll start with the most obvious one, which is likely the least important one I’ll ask today.” He turned to face Colonel Sorrel. “What is the Black Vault?”

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