January 1, 629

  The entire Line was on full alert.

  An estimated 1.2 million Scourge and counting were moving to siege and nearly all of them were invisible to aerial view. The more advanced scanners were telling us that our estimates were not only in the right ballpark, but conservative.

  The same Sovereign that had brought down the Treehouse was also on the move. Creating the very blizzard that was now blocking our sight, it was getting closer and had no intention of making things easy for us. Most weapons demanded some form of line of sight for maximum efficiency. Without it, they’d be shooting blind, and monsters would easily approach the wall.

  Thankfully, I had already prepared for this very Sovereign. How could I not, knowing since before I established Iron Legion that it was going to be the one attacking us?

  It had caught me off guard, attacking right at New Year’s. I suppose it shouldn’t have been surprising, but then again, I could never know when it would attack in general. I could only ever be prepared, and my preparations had not gone to waste.

  Units beyond the Line were all recalled while recon was already in the air circling the blizzard. Unfortunately, sending units into the blizzard itself to try and find anything was nothing more than suicide. I remembered what happened to those who did during the fall of the Treehouse. For now, we could only assume that the Sovereign had full awareness of everything inside the blizzard.

  All of my Desert Eagles were already fully geared when we walked into the command center. Everyone we crossed was running around frantically, and inside the center, the Generals were giving orders nonstop. They knew what it meant for the Sovereign to be moving. I hardly had to tell them what to do when I had already given them the protocols long ago.

  We were stocking for total war. This batch of incoming Scourge was not only going to be unrelenting, but they would draw out their forces so that we’d be in constant battle for only God knows how long. I wouldn’t be surprised if we were firing turrets nonstop for the next few months. With vastly reduced kill efficiency and a far larger number of enemies, we’d be expending an incredible amount of ordnance. The calculations had already been run in my mind, and I had already made it known to my Generals what would be expected during a time like this.

  When we all walked into the Command Center, there was only one person to greet me.

  “Sir.”

  “Happy New Year, General Gaffney.”

  “Happy New Year, sir. Apologies for having called you out here.”

  “The only entities at fault here are the Scourge, General. What’s it looking like?”

  I walked over to the tactical map, seeing ground sensors going nuts while the enemy population estimates were constantly updated by advanced aerial sensors. The entire map was covered in red, nearly every artillery battery in the rear was firing like their lives depended on it, and bombers were already in the air dropping their payloads blind.

  The blizzard itself came all the way up to the wall, but went no further. Unable to penetrate the dense magical barrier, even the open turret cells were safe from its touch. From there, it billowed upward thousands of feet in the air, a faint tint of red gracing the snow caught up in it.

  It dropped the temperature significantly, forcing our temperature control into overdrive to heat the wall. Even then, everyone except the Knights was bundled up.

  The General spoke.

  “The shields are ramping up as we speak and will be activated within the hour. That should give us roughly a mile of visibility. The expenditure will be harrowing to keep it running, but our stockpiles have been primed for this very purpose.”

  “Indeed.”

  “The harvesting teams have been disbanded for the time being, and we’re about to roll out new schedules and rotations for everyone according to your protocols. The troops are ready, as they have been for the last couple of months. The only two concerns now are new types of enemies and the Scourge Sovereign itself…”

  He looked at me, expecting more reassurance that I had the situation handled.

  The world knew that Iron Legion was without a Sovereign. It was hardly a secret, given that an Authority 8 Cold Summoner was its commander. So while it had a few Marshals to give it top end power, they could never be the deterrent that a Sovereign was.

  Most people thought that we were helpless against such a being. Not even my own troops were spared from such doubts. However, that was exactly why I exerted the information control that I did. In a way, they knew nothing, and so any doubts were turned to groundless speculation.

  It was enough to make sure that they did their jobs, but I had to feed my Generals a bit more than that.

  “Worry not, General. The Sovereign doesn’t intend to attack for some time.”

  “And when it does, sir?”

  “When it does, it will be dispatched like every other monster flooding toward us right now. The Sovereign is for me to worry about, as I told you two years ago when Iron Legion was first made operational. You just need to worry about facing down the millions of monsters coming toward us.”

  I turned to the man and pat his shoulder, a wide grin on my face.

  “This is where it begins, General. This is what every battle up until now has been for. These next several months will put to test the culmination of all your practices and struggles. Now, tell me about these new types of enemies.”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Yes, sir.”

  General Gaffney started explaining, not that it was anything new to me.

  The new enemies on the battlefield were aerial. Flying monsters that looked like they were attempting to rival Dragons clouded the skies in scattered, chaotic formations. Some of them were huge, but others, the smaller ones, were fast.

  As fast as propeller planes, based on the reports. They were the primary threat that I had long been warned about. They were new mutations developed by the Scourge in response to my air superiority, because even though the Scourge always had aerial monsters, they were never capable of competing with my planes, and thus became a non-factor.

  That was no longer. In exchange for being less resilient, they were faster and more agile. They could hunt down my planes like proper fighters, but thankfully, timely intelligence meant that my Generals were cautious enough not to allow any of my planes to be downed. They had all been recalled except for high altitude bombers and recon planes. Those hadn’t been attacked simply because those monsters couldn’t find them, thanks to cloaking and their sheer altitude.

  After I received the General’s explanation, I smiled at him.

  “You’re in luck, General. I happen to have exactly what you need. They’re already here, in fact. Soon, their commanding officer will stop by to introduce himself. Until then, I want you to talk to me about more tactical deployments. I need a moment though, so stand by.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He nodded as I turned back to the others, all of them waiting and looking around the Command Center.

  Umara, still by my side, looked up at me from underneath her witch hat.

  “What’s the plan?”

  “I’ll get us a mission. For now, go take everyone to the barracks, get them squared away. I’ll call you all back when I need you.”

  “Sure thing.”

  We exchanged a kiss before separating. I then turned back to General Gaffney, looking at the map.

  “Now, help me find the best place to use my scalpel.”

  ……

  …

  “It’s a beautiful night out, boys! The moon is full and bright, it’s the turn of the new year, and a million monsters just delivered their scum-sucking maws right into the hands of fiery purification! I even heard the Commander decided to stop by!”

  “You know he can probably hear you, right Captain? They say that no communication line goes without a hidden ear.”

  “Oh yeah, I’m sure the Commander loves to hear how my nutsack sticks to my thigh in these suits. In fact, if you’re listening Commander, we’d love to get some flight suits that don’t try to castrate us with these damn straps!”

  “Captain, it's not the Commander’s fault that your shit hangs low enough to touch your knees.”

  There were chuckles over the TACNET, the Captain’s plane tilting a bit in anger. The other five planes in his formation swayed slightly with the turbulent winds as they got closer to the blizzard.

  All around them were dozens of other squadrons, all of them in wedge formations as they headed toward the airspace far above the blizzard and wall.

  After a bit more banter, one of the pilots asked with concern.

  “Hey Captain, weren’t we supposed to be grounded given the new monsters in the skies? What’s the deal? There’s no way they’re sending us out to dogfight those Shriekers.”

  “I don’t know much more than you. Our orders are to ignore the Shriekers and cull the bulk of the heavy fliers before they reach the Line. I was told that the Shriekers would be taken care of.”

  “By what, though?”

  “You think I fucking know that, you idiot?! Now get ready for contact! HUDs up!”

  The Captain tabbed a button in the cockpit, his helmet lighting up with visual overlays.

  Suddenly, what was once a dark sky illuminated by the bright moon flashed with the signatures of thousands of aerial monsters. All of them were outlined and highlighted.

  They also saw the outliers, the Shriekers. A new enemy on the battlefield, it was quickly identified by their systems and tagged as an extreme threat.

  And they were heading straight toward them.

  The Captain tightened his grip on his control stick. At the rate they were moving, the Shriekers would make contact with them before they could reach the bulk of the flying army.

  There would be more than a few casualties, but there was still no sign of whatever the Commander had promised would take them out.

  He grit his teeth.

  “Focus, everyone! We’re diving straight in! Once they’re within a couple thousand feet, light them up!”

  “Roger!”

  He got his responses, everyone bracing for what was about to come.

  Those Shriekers started letting off their cries, audible even through the sound dampening on the planes, hence their name. They could be heard from many miles away.

  The distance between them was rapidly closing, the bodies of those monsters lighting up as they primed themselves with poisonous magic.

  The Captain yelled.

  “Get ready!!”

  He lined up his shots, the overlays tracing a path his guns would shoot, helping him line up with the enemy.

  His thumb hovered over the trigger, softly depressing it in anticipation.

  But then, his comms flashed with some new tags. A calm voice echoed in their ears.

  “All squadrons, hold fire. The Shriekers are ours.”

  “The hell?”

  Everyone looked at the tags, seeing the callsigns of the new entrants.

  They were Antares Squadron.

  That’s when they saw it.

  There were a dozen flares that blew past them, and then seconds later they all detonated, massive explosions blasting against the Shriekers and blowing them out of the sky.

  The Captain turned around, and in his HUD, he saw the body of the plane responsible zip past them.

  It moved as if they were standing still, that foreign, sleek plane moving at speeds scarcely believable and shocking them with its sound waves. Columns of controlled and concentrated flame billowed from rear thrusters, creating glowing streaks in the night sky.

  Then five more flew past, all of them arcing through the sky. Speed readings put them at about 2000 miles an hour. A quick subtraction told the Captain that they were moving 1600 miles an hour faster than they were.

  There were three other groups of those planes that entered the field, and all of them moved to engage the Shriekers. They launched missiles from their bellies, missiles that moved even faster than they did and blew every Shrieker they touched out of the sky with uncanny precision.

  There was dead silence over the comms until that calm voice chimed once more.

  “Antares Squadron on station. The skies are owned by Iron Legion. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.”

  “You heard the man!”

  The Captain yelled in response, a menacing grin plastered across his face.

  “It’s time for war! Full throttle, boys! Today, we send these heathens back to the threshold of hell! To Victory!”

  “TO VICTORY!”

  Everyone responded, planes charging into the swarm of monsters and letting off volleys of explosive turret fire.

  The skies above the blizzard were alit with flame, corpses dropping down like flies and acting as bombs on their own.