Page 2 of Elvenbred

He remembered looking at the swirling, coruscating colors of the Gate, the flares that signaled the strain and the imminent signs of failure as the overtaxed World Gate tried to compensate. He vividly remembered considering making a run for the Colony World himself, but became too afraid of the crush. Many elves lay dead, trampled in the fear that infected the mass. Still, for a long moment, stuck in indecision, he thought hard about running for the colony. A short sprint, and a new world, with new opportunities, and no Predators. He had even looked about him for his pack, supplies for an emergency retreat he always kept with him. Then, a machine struck the console platform, a piece of debris struck him, and it all went dark.

And without warning, everything went dark again.

He came back to himself, sweating and curled up on the workroom floor. Another blackout. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been away this time, but the tower hadn’t fallen and the battle still raged. He pushed himself up off the ground and looked out over the tower window. He’d been out long enough for more Machina to deploy. He did a quick count and came up with tem. About half the Machina had left their sheds. He felt sick to his stomach. This had been a longer blackout. Minutes at least. This was the longest blackout of his life, the worst so far.

He reached out and touched the tower wall for reassurance. Veridian. You are here now. Veridian. Oldest of the old. Built on rock, and a survivor. The number of cities diminished and Elvendom might fade, but Veridian held fast. He struggled against the memories, felt himself sliding backward, caught up in the diminishing number of older cities in the slow fade of Elvendom that marked the last hundred years.

He recalled awakening here, in this city, taken in on sufferance, as he had skills. Once he’d healed he’d learned the cost of the mad panic before the Gate. The panic had cost irreplaceable machinery, depleted (what had been) twenty cities of critical workers and fighters, exhausted the treasuries and granaries, and set what remained of Elvendom on an unrecoverable downward spiral.

And the only thing that had saved him from retribution had been that someone had pulled him out of the wreckage, and through a smaller Transit Gate to here, before the final convulsion and loss of his home. His salvation … that he had been lying half-unconscious from the final efforts of creating that Gate. It had been the job of others to protect it, the job of others to maintain the Shield, a job at which they had failed. And the consequences of that failure had left them demoted to the status of menials, replacing some of those escaped scrubs, forever stripped of rank, title, and privileges.

The Predator screamed again, wiping away the cobwebs of memory. He struggled, his mind disordered, trapped between the images of the past and present.

“Face it,” he said to himself. “Get up and face it.” He stood and went to observe. The Machina had come into play from their sheds along the wall, stepping in neat, ordered ranks, until they deployed. Two by two, then peeled off, moving with the peculiar matched precision that marked a single controlling mind. Two turned as one, aligned with two more, then four more, stepping as one as they moved into position.

Watching their movements, Haldeen realized that reinforcements hadn’t yet arrived, and that a single Manipulator had brought the dormant machines out of their sheds. The Machina moved as a single unit, their steps in unison, until they stood in a single row. They made small sideways adjustments along the top of the wall, keeping so close to the battlements that they scraped stone. Haldeen watched as they pivoted, turning their chests towards the Monster. He heard the whining as their copper shot furnaces spun up, rotating as they heated the shot and shaped it for release. He closed his eyes against the bright light as they ripple-fired from right to left, each Machina releasing its main weapon at close range into the monster’s side. Once the main weapons had fired, Haldeen watched as the dozen-odd Machina took a step to the left, pivoted, and launched their firelances. They opened fire all at once, discharging weapons as they continued to move to their right and along the Monster’s side.

Haldeen nodded approvingly. It took a good Manipulator to fire the Machina as they moved, a better one to divide their mind, and work multiple Machina independently, and to spin out their personal magic in small refinements as each weapon engaged.

It took a fine magician to handle more than one Machina moving. It took an extraordinary Manipulator to move twenty Machina, all firing, into battle position. He hoped this Manipulator survived long enough to collect the medal and his reward, though. More than one had overstrained themselves, and when that happened, there usually wasn’t enough left for the pyre.

A distant movement caught his eye, and he glanced up, then locked on the horizon. He had a clear view of what else was going on out there from the top of his tower. In the distance, he saw more of the great Predators, large and small, with no two alike, moving through the forest. They were just at the edge of the clearing surrounding the city, with other larger ones crossing the forested ridge that had formerly held the preserve … until that had been lost. He counted a dozen large enough to shift the trees when they moved, and likely thousands more of the little ones … things his size with too many (or too few) legs. His earlier fears were ghosts from the past, but the one that rooted in his belly now came from the Predators that stayed in the distance, waiting … watching? as this one attacked.

These creatures watched from the safety of the trees, safely out of the fight, and apparently content to let this bolder one attack the city on its own. He glanced up at the city’s shield, and saw the wavy green sky above. For all the stress down below, the Shield appeared sound. Thank the Seven Kings. If it went down, then he had no doubt that those waiting just outside of long-range weapons would be over and through the wall in a trice.

This was not where he wanted to be, but at this point, with guards and Machina moving through the hall, it was almost as dangerous to try and go down to safety. The smells of the burned creature, the acrid odor of the expended firelances, even the hot-metal smell from the Machina as they charged their mass launchers, overwhelmed the usually crisp, controlled air of his tower. The sound roared up and washed over him, a mix of thunder, the screams of the injured and the dying from below, and the roars of the creature, metallic screeches as its heads gave voice to whatever it was feeling had no difficulty in making a mockery of the “soundproofing.”

Haldeen felt the sweating and shakes rising up in him again, and he feared another blackout. He’d been careful to make his excuses when called to the King’s Chamber to observe and comment on tactics and responses. He’d been able to sit apart as the others crowded close, and to be alone with his miseries and memories. This battle, enough like the one before to throw him into memory without warning, brought all of it back. He felt as he had the century before when the Colonization had failed, the scrubs had panicked and rushed through, and the city had fallen. It had been a hundred years since he had last witnessed, or fought in, a battle in person. The darkness threatened to sweep over him again. His last thought: The Predators have never come this close to my tower before.

This time, he controlled the fear, turned it back. He steadied his breathing, taking the slow and deep cycles, and letting the fear out with each exhalation. He counted a dozen breaths, slow and deep, then a dozen more. The terror fell away, and he felt himself again. He worked to focus on his role … not as the frightened refugee, but as a Gatekeeper … calm and dispassionate. He might not be a full participant, but given the risk was also not merely an observer. Steady. Calm. Observe. Study. Detach. There were things to be learned from this fight, things he would not discover any other way. He pushed the fear down, pushed the memories down, and struggled to see. Really see. Study the Predators. Look for patterns.

He glanced again at the tree line. The other Big Predators knew the distance to the walls. Knew it. They stayed just out of range of their furthest weapons. An animal can be taught to avoid an area through punishment. General wisdom said the Monsters could be ‘taught’ if you hurt one enough. He’d never paid this much attention to the Predators themselves before … they were not his specialty, Gates and Machinas were. The king reminded him all the time to stick to what he knew. Still, he had seen enough to know that watching through remotes in the King’s Tower meant keeping the focus on the ones attacking, and working to show a calm exterior. The others expected calm, clear counsel from the Lord Gatekeeper. Who else could offer the king reasoned and wise counsel even as the city came under attack? It had never occurred to him to observe the ones further away, just as the other Predators seemed to be studying how this one attacked.

He felt a fist clench in his belly at that thought. He reached for language to steady and calm himself. The … the Polycephalus stressed their defenses all by itself. Reinforcing squads from the city reserve trickled onto the wall to support the wall guards and Machina as the first-defenders ran through their ordnance at a ferocious clip.

Haldeen watched the Monster for a time and grew increasingly aware that the damage to its flanks seemed mostly superficial. The copper shot furnaces, their newest and heaviest weapons, had left still-smoking holes in its side and done some damage, but not enough to make it turn away. The defenders’ show looked impressive, but to his eye, appeared to accomplish little more than turning the hard-gleaned resources of the city into smoke and noise.

He watched as the fire slackened as firelances ran low and casualties mounted. The city’s reinforcements hadn’t yet appeared in enough numbers to make up the difference. Lord Haldeen saw that the squads’ shots might not injure the thing, but they caused the creature to pause to respond, and so bought time for the defenses to shore up. Their actions, and their casualties, bought crucial minutes for the main defenses. The Machina took time to cycle-up and arm after each shot, and a bit more time for their Manipulator to bring them into play.

The dozen-odd nearest Haldeen on the wall came to be reinforced as more Machina left their sheds or came tromping along the walls from other sectors. In time, the Machina were fully deployed along the wall, precisely spaced, cycling down the firelances to deliver stored magic to their main weapons. Two fired ranging shots, and Haldeen watched the rest make minute shifts. Then, all twenty unloaded, firing in volleys of four at a time. Haldeen put his hand up in front of his eyes to block the brightness as the superheated copper launched from each Machina to strike the Predator.

The Manipulator quickly set a sustained pattern. Each Machina released a moment after the one before, as synchronized as a metronome, and driving fire into a few key points. The first Manipulator to work still managed a dozen or so Machina, though often one would stutter and stop as he struggled to maintain control over the entire group. The Manipulator had selected two leg-pairs close to him, and near the joining where several of the heads came together. He ripple-fired his Machina, lashing the targets with molten copper. Each Machina took precious seconds to heat its furnace, launch its projectile, and cool, but the steady boom-crack of launch and impact carried its own rhythm. He watched, fascinated, as the Manipulator worked, teams of three Machina firing in identical patterns on the same rhythm. One, four, three, two … beat, beat, beat, the shots coordinated across the firing groups with each group concentrating on a single point. The other Manipulators eventually grasped what the first was doing, and soon, a core of machines concentrated their fire on the same target.

Smoke rose from the monster’s sides in greater volume, enough that it had to interfere with the Manipulators’ aim, but the streams of molten copper continued. Haldeen hadn’t been counting the weapons’ launches. He knew the Machina carried a finite supply of seed metal, and the weapon furnaces were absolute beasts to power, but they were a joy to watch in action. This was working, at last. He smiled.

He loved these things. He had designed these Machina based on the hard lessons learned in the fall of his own beloved city. Others had created the furnaces. Master craftsmen had turned his plans into reality, and the construction had been the work of the skilled hands of titanium-crafters.

The Machina looked like headless, humpbacked giants. He’d designed them to be bipedal to simplify maneuvering around the city, and equipped them with arms that carried firelances and stabilized the Machina when their main weapons, the copper shot furnaces, went into action. They could also act as grappler/cutters when they ran out of ammunition. Which hopefully would not be soon ….

The debacle at the World Gate left Machina in short supply. So much resource lost! But, the Kings had no choice; butter went scant when weapons were required; it went scanter when virtually all the farms outside the city walls were lost, and the only meat that came in was from raiding parties of expendable hunters who stalked and killed the little Predators that prowled the bases of those walls. The priority had to be on more Machina for the walls, more to hold off the Predators. Still, he liked to think that his designs were better than those of other Great Workers. He liked to think that. But if I am going to be honest … I don’t actually know if it was inferior design that failed the other cities, or just overwhelming odds. He suspected it had been a bit of poor design and a lot of numbers.

His vantage in the tower let him look along the city wall for a considerable distance. He saw that the commanders in the adjacent wall sectors had released groups of their Machina to support, aid, and replace the ones in combat as they became depleted. He saw it added risk to the rest of the wall, but the fight was here right now. He looked out at the Predators outside the wall. They hadn’t moved, and there was no sign that the other Predators were going to join the one attacking or attack a different section of wall.

That was a relief. A most profound relief. At least this time they might be intelligent enough to stand back out of range, but they were not intelligent enough to figure out that if two or more big ones attacked at other spots on the walls, then sooner or later the elves would run out of defenses.

He looked up to where the two Big Ones loitered in the distance, well back from the tree line, and each moving through the forest like an auto-dozer. If even one attacked them now, the depleted sectors would be hard-pressed to hold. One breach of the walls, one crack in the dam, and the problem would instantly stop being the Big Ones … it would then become the thousands of little ones that would swarm the city. Veridian would fall, as had Aubergine before it. He felt his hard-earned detachment waver, and felt himself spinning down that hole again. Breathe. Focus. Focus.

One Machina began to move erratically. He watched in horror as it staggered a few steps out of formation to the side. He watched the Manipulator emerge from the low tower on the battlement, trying to safe the weapons, locking them to a neutral position.