The Plains of Pluto - Chapter 13

Devnum

Lucilla walked with purpose, her head up and her face set like stone, as she crossed the courtyard and started up the steps toward the Imperial Forum. Ministers and others with business inside the palace complex moved out of their way when they saw her, and not simply out of deference.

She ignored them. She was there with a mission and the flood of telegraph messages routed through the port of Kalb had made it all the more imperative.

Not that there weren't still obstacles. One, in fact, was hustling down the steps to intercept her even as she neared the entrance to the seat of the Imperial Senate.

"Empress, I implore you to reconsider," Taenaris said, as worked up as she'd ever seen him. "This will make it even harder for us to get your bill through and it could alienate many of our supporters. They are still on edge from your last performance. This is a bad idea."

Lucilla didn't even slow down. "Bad ideas are all we have left."

She left him to follow behind her in her wake. She knew he meant well, and he was an excellent politician, but he was as short-sighted as his colleagues. They'd grown complacent over the years of peace and had forgotten that inaction was the death of a people.

She could almost feel the tension as she entered the chamber and made her way to the open central for. Senators huddled in small groups having hushed but agitated conversations. As they should be. She knew that news of the attacks hadn't stayed secret. Word had already started to spread through the city like wildfire.

Taking her place, Lucilla paused to allow these groups to break up and the men to take their seats. Most did so quickly, probably eager to find out what exactly happened and what she was going to do about it. Others were less prompt.

Petty shows of independence for men who forgot how they got their positions and to whom they owed their allegiance.

"Honored senators of the Britannic Empire, by now I am certain you have heard about the treachery of the Ptolemies and their cowardly attacks on our ports. I wish I could tell you we had seen this coming or we were prepared for this, but I cannot."

This was clearly not what the men had hoped she would say, as several gave their comrades side-eyed glances of worry.

"I can tell you that it could have been worse. While I cannot divulge all of the intelligence we are working with, we managed to raid a meeting between smugglers and high-level Egyptian officials several weeks ago that seems to have forced their plan into action early. Yes, the coordinated attacks on Maleth, Cyprus, and the trading outposts on the border of Egyptian territory were both terrible and costly, they have not crippled us. Our major ports and military outposts in the region remain safe and still able to prosecute the war. That being said, I think it is time this body considers its role in allowing these events to happen. The Ptolemies are opportunists. They did not join us in the fight against Carthage until they were certain we were going to win, and they would not have switched now if they weren't equally certain. We gave them that certainty. The endless debating and hesitation instead of doing what we had to showed how weak we were and made them believe that we were not willing to do everything we could to stop this invasion."

A murmur of discontent rippled through the chamber at the accusation, but Lucilla ignored it and pressed on. "That weakness, and the defections it has allowed, has caused the situation to become even more dire than it was when I spoke to you a month ago, begging for you to do what you knew we had to do. With Egypt and Greece now fully aligned with the Easterners, our manpower problem has become even more untenable and our strategic position has been severely compromised. Instead of being stopped near the borders of Sarmatia, the enemy now has multiple avenues for invasion. They are able to use Greece as a springboard into the continent and Egypt as their gateway to the middle sea. Instead of having to fight on one front, long as it is, we now must fight three."

At least several of the senators had the good sense to shift uncomfortably, looking nervous at their role in the failure of the empire to protect itself.

"I want to make very clear the current military situation. Our forces are stretched thin having to fight on multiple fronts across two continents. Eastern fleets persistently attempt to push northward along the African coast. They are testing us at every turn. We cannot afford to remain complacent in the face of such aggression. If we fail to act today, it will not be me who brings you tyranny, but the Easterners who will bring chains, swords, and fire to our lands. Our way of life, our freedoms, everything we have built and cherished, stands on the precipice of destruction. The only thing that will stop this is to sign the act of conscription and allow us to start getting the manpower we desperately need into the legions in time to stop this."

They had to know where she was going with her speech, but it wasn't until she named the conscription law that they reacted, with still almost half the senators yelling in protest.

"We will never agree to this kind of law!" one shouted, his face red with anger. "It goes against everything we stand for!"

"You will agree to this," She said, speaking over him and the other shouting men. "You will agree to it because it is what you have to do. You will do it because it is your duty to your people and your empire. I will not stand by while you neglect that duty. So I give you this one chance. Pass the necessary emergency measure or I will dissolve this senate and appoint new representatives who grasp the severity of the crisis we face."

The chamber erupted in outrage. Senators leapt to their feet, shouting accusations and protests.

"Tyrant! You would destroy the very thing you claim to protect!"

She let them yell and vent. She knew how that would go over, and she didn't care. This was what had to happen if she was going to ensure the empire continued to stand. So she faced them, unmoved and impassive.

When their shouts finally began to fade, she said, "I say again, you have this one chance. Next time I come before this body, you will either willingly sign this law, or I will show you the steel of my resolve. The choice is yours, senators."

***

Eastern Germania

“Why bother, they haven’t moved in days,” a voice behind Gundomar said as he peered through a narrow firing slit in the earthen wall of the trench.

While the man was right in that the easterners had been very quiet recently, except for the occasional exchange of rifle fire to make sure everyone kept their heads down, the attitude was very wrong.

This was the hardest problem with this new form of war. When they were marching from pitched battle to pitched battle, the men were always doing something. Active. It at least gave them something to focus on, even if it was coming up with new complaints about how much they had to march each day.

In the trenches, there were long days of nothing happening, just sitting in one spot, waiting for the enemy to do anything. It bred complacency, which was as dangerous as any rifle bullet.

“Which doesn’t mean you won’t see any action today. Or tomorrow. So keep your wits about you, because when they come running, you’re going to want to be ready.”

As if on cue, a rifle crack split the air. A legionnaire, a fresh-faced recruit barely old enough to shave, ducked as a bullet whistled overhead.

“Gods!” Cassius exclaimed, his face pale. “That was close!”

Two soldiers who’d been standing near a firing step nearby quickly raised up and returned fire before hopping back down. There was no way of knowing where the transgressing bullet had come from, so their fire had been generally in the direction of the enemy trench. It, in turn, caused a few more bullets to come their way again, each much too high to be a threat.

This was the way of it, men shooting blind back and forth, hoping to get lucky and not wanting to stay visible for long enough to become a target.

Mostly it gave them something to do and talk about to break the tedium.

“Can’t hit the broad side of a barn, can you?” one of the men teased, elbowing the other in the ribs.

“Like you’re any better. At least I hit the logs in front of their trench. Your shot went way over.”

They went back and forth like this for several minutes until one of the younger men with them, a replacement who’d joined a few weeks prior, yelped. For a moment, they all thought something had happened, although the boy had been sitting on the ground, so it was unlikely that shrapnel or a bullet could have gotten him.

They figured out what the boy was screaming about when a large rat scurried between his feet, disappearing into a gap in the trenchworks. The young soldier’s face flushed red as the veterans around him burst into laughter.

“Scared of a little rat, boy?” one of the Optio’s chuckled. “Wait till you see what the enemy’s got in store for us.”

Gundomar could appreciate a little humor and camaraderie among the men, but all of them had taken their eyes off the observation slits. He’d just opened his mouth to reprimand them for their inattention when the world exploded.

The first shell hit maybe a hundred paces down, straight in the trench, showering them with dirt and splinters. He was looking that direction as the shell exploded, and he saw a soldier, he couldn’t tell who, literally torn apart by the force of the explosion before the concussive force threw Gundomar sideways, slamming him against the trench wall.

For a moment, all he could hear was a high-pitched ringing. The world was covered in a sea of dust, making it impossible to see anything. As his senses slowly returned, along with the screams of his men.

Gundomar pushed himself up, his vision blurry and unfocused. He blinked hard, trying to clear the grit from his eyes.

“Incoming!” someone shouted.

Another explosion rocked the trench, a little further out, on the ground behind the trench this time. Gundomar felt the heat of the blast, but fire and concussive force washed over the trench, causing all of the men still standing to duck.

“Take cover!” Gundomar bellowed, stumbling forward, grabbing soldiers and pushing them towards whatever shelter they could find. “Get down!”

The air was thick with dust and smoke, making it hard to breathe. Gundomar coughed violently, tasting copper in his mouth. He wiped his face, his hand coming away streaked with blood, whether his own or someone else’s, he couldn’t tell.

“Medic!” The cry came from further down the line. “We need a medic here!”

Gundomar turned to see a legionnaire crawling towards him, one leg missing and the other a mangled mess of flesh and bone, leaving a trail of blood in his wake.

“Mama,” he whimpered, his face ashen. “Oh gods! Mama! Please, someone!”

Before Gundomar could reach him, another shell landed nearby, on the rim of the trench a dozen paces down. The explosion threw up a shower of dirt and debris, momentarily obscuring his view. When the dust settled, Aulus lay motionless, half-buried under a collapsed section of the trench.

Other men had been closer, and he could see hands sticking out of the log, rock, and dirt.

“Dig them out! There are men trapped under there!”

“We’re coming for you!” one of the soldiers shouted encouragingly as they dug. “Hold on, lads! We’ll get you out!”

The shelling continued unabated. As bad as it was each time a shell landed close, Gundomar noticed that despite the intensity of the barrage, many of the shells were overshooting their position. Their aim was off. The shells that did hit were deadly unlike anything he had been close to, much more like their own new shells, but most seemed to explode where no one was. A small mercy nonetheless.

However they got these new shells, Gundomar knew this wasn’t their whole plan. An assault would follow the shelling. They’d tried it with much less devastating rounds, and they’d try it here. Shaking off his daze, he grabbed a stunned soldier by the shoulders, physically turning him around and pushing him towards the firing step.

“On your feet!” Gundomar roared as he started getting more men into place. “Man your positions! They’ll be coming soon!”

He moved down the line, repeating his orders and physically manhandling soldiers into place when necessary. Slowly, training began to overcome panic. Soldiers moved with purpose, taking up defensive positions or working to reinforce damaged sections of the trench. Even with the terror and excitement, Gundomar allowed himself a moment of pride in his men’s resilience.

Now they needed fire of their own.

He hurried down the trench to make a call to headquarters for counter-battery fire, only to pull up short as he found the small station a twisted wreck of splintered wood and tangled wire. Without it, they had no way to call for support. There was no way command didn’t know about the barrage, now with all the large-scale explosions, but it was still his job to report.

Gundomar’s eyes fell on Pavo, a wiry young legionnaire who, although only being with them for six months, had earned the respect and even affection of the older veterans. He grabbed the young soldier as he was about to run by and pulled him to a stop.

“I need you to run a message back to command,” he said, scribbling a hasty note on a scrap of paper. “We need immediate counter-battery fire on the enemy positions. Our location is being shelled with new explosives, and we expect an infantry assault to follow.”

He pressed the paper into Pavo’s trembling hands.

“You run like the of Cerberus is at your heels, boy. The lives of every man in this trench depend on you getting this message through. Do you understand?”

Pavo nodded. “Yes, Centurion!”

“Then go!”

Gundomar gave him a push towards the communication trench to get him going. As Pavo disappeared around the bend, Gundomar hurried back to his men.

The bombardment had slackened as he got back, which meant it was coming any time. They had played this game enough times before trenches for him to know what was about to happen. The enemy were trying to soften them up before an attack, hoping to catch them with their heads down, hiding.

Pulling out a spyglass, he peeked through an observation slit. As if summoned by his thoughts, dark figures began to emerge from the trenches and into No Man’s Land. He had to give it to them, they were doing it better than they had been, with the mad rush across open ground. This time they were advancing in coordinated waves, using the craters as cover.

“Here they come!” Gundomar bellowed. “Steady now! Wait for my order!”

He watched as the first wave of Eastern infantry drew closer. Behind them, more soldiers poured out of their trenches, a seemingly endless tide of men.

A whistling overhead caught Gundomar’s attention. He looked up, expecting to see more enemy shells, but instead saw Alliance shells exploding harmlessly behind the enemy lines.

It was well short of the enemy batteries. Not a single one got close to the enemy guns. The counter battery fire was completely ineffectual.

He couldn’t focus on that now. The enemy were in effective range, where most of his boys would hit what they were waiting for. He just needed to wait until enough of them popped up and made a run for the next series of shell holes.

“Ready!” he shouted.

Rifles rose to shoulders, barrels pointing over the lip of the trench. Gundomar waited and watched.

“Fire!”

The sound was deafening as dozens of rifles discharged simultaneously. The first wave of attackers stumbled and fell back, running into a wall of lead. It wasn’t going to stop them. Even as he watched more men kept coming, scrambling over the bodies of their fallen comrades.

Worse, the volley had broken them up. They were now much more ragged. Now, rate of fire was what mattered.

“Reload!” Gundomar ordered. “Fire at will!”

Men worked to reload their weapons as quickly as possible. They made a good showing of it. Most were trained and had been fighting for a while, and they spent time drilling on firing quickly, over the last few months for the new boys, to make sure they were ready for a moment like this.

His men did a damn fine job, most firing every twenty to thirty seconds, loading and firing, loading and firing. Gundomar was next to one of the younger boys, trying to keep them going and calm, since they had a tendency to panic. All too often, they would load three or four bullets into the rifle before firing, leading to explosions and mishaps. The one closest though was doing a good job.

Gundomar was about to tell him that when, without warning, his head snapped back, a spray of blood erupting from his forehead and he dropped to the ground, eyes staring sightlessly at the sky.

Gundomar swallowed hard, pushing down the bile that rose in his throat. The boy was barely old enough to shave, and the Centurion felt a moment of fury for his death. Not that there was time for grief. He grabbed the boy’s loaded rifle and stepped up onto a shooting platform, firing a shot and seeing a man in the distance go down before hopping back down.

It wasn’t his place. Stray shots were dropping his men now in ones and twos, and he knew his job was to stay in the trench, make sure everyone was firing and doing what they were supposed to, but he wanted to get one, just to avenge the boy’s death.

The Eastern soldiers kept coming, wave after relentless wave. For every one that fell, two more seemed to take his place. The men were fighting bravely, reloading and firing with impressive speed, but it wasn’t going to be enough. They were getting closer, and their numbers seemed endless.

Suddenly, the whistle of incoming shells changed. It was lower, closer. Gundomar’s first thought was that the enemy was shelling along the front even though their own men were in the way, but as the first shells landed, he realized with a jolt that it was Alliance artillery.

Explosions erupted across No Man’s Land, much closer to the Western Alliance trenches than before. Eastern soldiers were caught in the blasts, their bodies thrown like leaves in a storm. The advance faltered as men sought cover in shell holes, desperate to escape the deadly barrage.

“That’s it!” Gundomar shouted, his voice hoarse from yelling and the acrid smoke. “Keep firing! Give them hell!”

A cheer went up from his men as they witnessed the devastation wrought by their artillery. But Gundomar knew better than to celebrate too soon. They had pushed through an artillery barrage before. Their guns couldn’t cover all of no-man’s land and the enemy was a lot closer than the last time they’d tried a charge like this.

He was proven right minutes later when the easterners began pushing forward again, some running flat out and others from cover to cover. They were going to get to his lines, his rifles and the artillery be damned.

“Grenades!” he bellowed. “Bayonets! Prepare for close combat!”

Men scrambled to comply, reaching for the fin-shaped grenades at their belts. This was the part he always worried about. They’d had a few times a man pulled the strap on his grenade only to be shot before he could throw it, killing several of his comrades.

Thankfully that didn’t happen this time. Nearly all of the grenades landed among the advancing troops, and all made it out of the trenches. Explosions ripped along their ranks, as more of the men were cut down.

And yet still, on they came.

Gundomar pulled his gladius, glad that the standard equipment still left officers with a sword, for when things got tight. The men had their rifles and bayonets, good weapons for hand to hand, but they were too cumbersome for officers, whose job it was to lead, and not shoot at the enemy. He had the dropped rifle from earlier, but the boy’s bayonet was still on his body, and there wasn’t enough time to go for it.

The first Eastern soldier vaulted into the trench, one landing heavily on the muddy ground a few steps away. Gundomar didn’t hesitate. He lunged forward, driving his gladius into the man’s back before he had a chance to recover from his leap.

More enemy soldiers followed after him, pouring into the trench, engaging in brutal hand-to-hand combat with Gundomar’s men. The narrow confines of the trench made it difficult to maneuver, and the fighting quickly devolved into a chaotic melee.

It was violent and brutal, and if his men were at full fighting force, they could have beaten this group easily. But they weren’t. The artillery barrage they suffered had weakened them, with a lot of his people in the open when those first shells hit, and the rest shaken by the new experience.

Gundomar grabbed a loaded rifle dropped by one of the men next to him and fired point-blank into an advancing enemy, then swung the butt of his rifle to catch another in the face. The impact sent the man reeling back, blood streaming from his broken nose.

All around him, his men were fighting for their lives. The young legionnaire who’d nearly wet himself at the sight of a rat earlier, was now battling like a demon possessed. He’d lost his rifle somewhere in the chaos and was wielding his entrenching tool like an axe, bringing it down with brutal force on any enemy who came within reach.

For a moment, things seemed to be at a stalemate. He was losing too many men, but the enemy assault was slowing, thanks to the artillery.

A commotion from further down the trench behind him drew Gundomar’s attention. For a moment he feared somehow a fresh wave of enemy soldiers had managed to make it into the trench and were pushing to take this whole section, until he saw the cut of their pants and tunics. It was a wave of reinforcements, charging up the rear from the communication trenches, led by the lad Pavo he’d sent with the message earlier.

The quick-thinking boy had brought back men with him. The reinforcements slammed into the Eastern soldiers’ flank, catching them by surprise.

His men rallied at his cry, finding new strength. With the reinforcements bolstering their numbers, they began to slowly but surely drive the enemy back. The fighting was still fierce, the tide had turned.

It only took a few minutes for the last of the Eastern soldiers to be driven back out of the trench or cut down where they stood. Those who could were scrambling back over the top of the trench, fleeing towards their own lines.

They had won, but the cost had been high. Men lay sprawled in grotesque positions all along the trench. They died in a hundred ways, torn apart, burned, stabbed, and shot, some laying where they fell, killed instantly, others curled up, having died in agony, clutching at wounds.

The enemy’s attack had been repulsed, but at a terrible cost. The enemy had copied their new shells and maybe even cannon. Which meant they were on even footing again.

The war was going to last a very, very long time.