AN: So, welcome back! We've begun to offensive to retake the Trinity Highcrowne area.

Chapter 89: Trinity Station: Phase One

The sights and sounds of men quietly murmuring. The feel of a slow rumbling vibration below his feet. The sensation of metal pressed against his back. Scott could not help but smile. The only thing that would have made traveling to the battle zone more nostalgic would be parachutes. Sadly, they would not be dropping into the area airborne style.

During his time in the Army he’d only done one actual combat drop, his artillery unit typically did not do such things. However, he was qualified and did maintain jump status for the extra pay. As one of the few members of his unit who had the qualifications he, and those few others, were sent in to help establish an operation area for the artillery equipment that was coming the next day.

It was one of his few fond memories of being a soldier that actually involved combat. Though, if he were to be honest it would be because most of the insurgents in the area left before his group arrived. In the end, it was basically a free chance to go sky diving during the middle of his tour in the desert.

His duty then, as now, primarily began with securing a perimeter. Unfortunately, there was no actual parachute portion of the engagement.

The toasted shaped troop shuttle touched down with a heavy thump. Everyone stood up and prepared to head out. All seemed to be quiet save for the murmuring of the gathered troops, but it was a lie told by the shuttle itself. The moment the bay door opened, sound and light assaulted them.

Unholy screams, the sound of metal rending metal, and the pulse-pounding rapid fire blasts of heavy guns filled the air. The bay doors dropped open on a world of early morning madness.

“Everybody out! Get to your designated location!” cried the enforcer.

Scott grinned slightly then ran out with the rest of the gathered people. This was the first time he could remember that he actually enjoyed the prospect of heading into a war zone.

The moment they left the transport shuttle they entered into a world filled with carnage, twisted metal, and death. Several enforcers cried out for their people.

“Blue team! You’re with me!” cried one of the enforcers. Scott fell in with him, along with height others. The leader of their group ran ahead at a steady jog while motioning for them to follow.

“Our objective is the west gate towers and their turrets! If you see civilians being attacked, cry out their position along the way. Unit Green, or Battlegroup One will investigate!” cried the enforcer. “Do not engage unless the enemy is directly impeding our path or progress.”

“Yes, sir!” called out the members of Blue Team.

The directive might seem heartless, but it was a sound strategy as far as Scott was concerned. In a world where people could be resurrected, it made more sense to focus on the task at hand than to risk the mission to help someone who could be helped almost as easily after the fact.

A small group of eldritch armor knights came stomping around the corner as the ten man team neared it. “Gunners concentrate fire on the lead opposition. Everyone else keep moving!”

Four of the militia men in the group lifted their firearms and began firing at the foremost armored foe. The energy blasts did little damage, however. It was unfortunate, but most of the higher level individuals with excellent gear did not attend small scale situations such as this one. They could easily garner far more from a single day of hunting in a higher level area. Only the official militia for Valkovia as likely to have a large number of truly high level people.

“Mages and sorcerers! Clear the path, or hold them still!” cried the enforcer, when the gunners proved less than effective.

“Yes, sir!” cried Scott. No one else moved forward. It seemed he was the only dedicated magic user on the team. He ran ahead and cast his Starlight Flare spell.

Unlike the first time that he used the spell during the Valkovia invasion, his skill and focus were higher. These knights were also weaker in general. The armor of the knights began to smoke and spark as the divine light shined down against them. They were forced back slightly.

“Celestial magic?” asked the enforcer, mildly surprised. He wasted no time in pulling out a grenade, however.

“Best thing I have for something like these things,” said Scott.

“Works for me!” cried the enforcer before tossing the grenade into the midst of the monsters. A moment later a fiery explosion erupted outward, but then quickly raced back in to the original point of the explosion. Whirling wind roared outward from that point that picked the heavy monsters up and threw them all around the area.

“Take point, and keep using that spell!” called out the enforcer to Scott.

“Right!” Scott continued through the newly cleared hole, followed by the rest of the squad.

Several minutes of dedicated jogging passed. Whenever the armored monsters appeared, Scott would slow them down with the damage of his celestial spell while the enforcer tossed his weird explosive tornado grenades.

The majority of the invasion force was in the center of the small town. Blue Team arrived at the West Gate with little issue once they developed a proper game plan for moving through the knights.

“Sorcerer, and close combat members, get to the gate and slow the invaders. Gunners, with me!” cried the enforcer. He led the gunners up to the top of the left gate tower. Once inside, he reached into a hip-compartment attachment and pulled out various items and parts.

“You four provide cover fire, while I repair this,” he instructed the gunners, before turning to a badly damaged heavy gun emplacement. The tri-barrel device was blackened and ruined in several locations, but it was also a necessary part of the town’s defenses.

Down on the ground, Scott continually used his Starlight Flare spell to damage and slow his opponents. It would not have done much to true machine monsters, but these creatures were a type of undead being.

Scott’s other close combat team members were all human, and quite good and fighting against the slow but powerful creatures. While they used their fists or blunt weapons to fight, Scott noticed that they did reasonable amounts of damage. The gunners occasionally took down one of the armor knights with concentrated weapons fire.

Unfortunately, there were dozens of the things marching steadily toward the gate. In the far distance, even more of them were on the way. Tens of dozens of waves, of armored monsters were heading toward the small station town.

Scott dodged to the side to avoid a heavy axe strike then leapt up and performed a hard jump kick to the thing’s helmet. It was rocked slightly by the blow, but it was not until Scott followed up with kick to the back of its knee that it fell to the ground.

Attacking the legs of the beasts was a tactic that the others did as well. Working in pairs, they worked to drop the monsters one at a time. Scott’s Spell did constant damage to the beasts and kept them back, while those that got past him were met with the ferocity of his fellow Blue Team members.

The better part of half an hour passed, while the enforcer did his job. Scott’s mana was at a low point and even the gunners were low on ammunition. Small injuries were becoming ever greater problems as the enemy monsters managed to catch one of the defenders now and then.

“Everybody back!” cried the team leader as the heavy gun diagnostic finished. “It’s time!”

Scott and the others fled from the gate. A few of the monsters made it through, but those outside the gate were soon met by the blue blazing spheres of destruction as the tri-barrel device began to slowly rotate and fire off into the distance. Every sphere that hit one of the monsters exploded in a powerful combination of fire, lightning, and concussive force.

Every few seconds a large blue sphere formed between the barrels and shot out to attack a concentrated knot of the beasts. The larger sphere exploded with much greater force and sent monsters flying. However, after roughly one minute the barrels began to heat up rapidly.

The enforcer stopped firing and pulled one of the gunners aside to show him how to replace the barrels with another set. After finishing up, he fired a few rounds experimentally he said, “You have this gun. Use these two sets of parts to change the barrel out when they start to glow red hot. Just rotate through each set until we’re done. Do not forget to change them!”

The enforcer left three more sets of barrels and a few repair tools, and then took two of the other gunners with him to the right gate tower. On the way, he handed Scott a few of his grenades and said, “When they bunch up, use ’em!”

The heavy gun continued to fire while the enforcer began to process of fixing the second heavy gun. Scott and the close combat team fought the knights who made it through the gate, but other monsters appeared from behind. There was still fighting going on in the city, after all.

“Hey, let’s get them to group up together!” called out Scott while holding up a grenade.

“Right!” called out two of the other fighters. The other two members were busy finishing off a knight, but they came over once their fight was finished.

The five man squad ran around the area for a moment while getting the knights to follow them around. Once they were grouped up twenty knights deep, Scott grinned and tossed a grenade into the center of them. The explosion rocked the area in a powerful fireball. The resulting tornado that immediately followed afterward both sent the monster’s flying and tore them apart.

“Hell yeah!” cried the close combat squad members. “Let’s do it again!”

“We’re about to get our chance,” said a red headed man while pointing to a half dozen knights marching down the street toward them.

“Alright!” cried the enforcer from up in the tower. A series of rapid fire spheres of energy raced outward to strike down a knight outside the gate.

A few minutes later, the enforcer came down from the tower. Another gunner took over for him, while he joined with the group below. He threw a grenade at the oncoming knights and watched them get blown around.

“Right. All we have to do now is hold position while we wait for Battlegroup Three and the main militia,” said the team leader.

“Yes, sir!” replied the squad members.

The heavy guns fired a stream of exploding death that took out a knight with every three round burst. Now and then, the big shots that were fired would take out a small group of the oncoming wave of monsters. Between their slow movements, and tendency to group together, it was easy to clear out most of the oncoming waves.

Roughly two hours later, the enforcer reached out and touched the side of his helmet. He nodded twice then said, “Understood.”

“Battlegroup three just touched down. We need to hold for another fifteen minutes,” he said.

“Yes, sir!” cried Scott and the others while they fought off a small number of knights that managed to come at them from within the center of town.

A dozen knights marched toward them from a side street a few minutes later. Scott tossed a grenade toward them, and scattered them burned and torn armor bodies to the winds.

“Right! Don’t lose focus,” called out the Enforcer when he spied a large cluster of people running toward them. Armor knights continued to appear in small numbers, but the relief forces were almost on site.

Their relief, a forty man battle team comprised of militia men and the remnants of those who volunteered to join up for this battle, arrived on site. The Blue Team leader saluted the superior officer taking charge of the area, and then collected his people. Scott noticed several more heavy guns, and a barricade, being constructed on the ground while he waited for the gunners to climb down from the gate towers.

Two steel boxes were opened, one of which was resupply items for Blue Team. Scott received three health potions and two vials of mana restorative. At the team leader’s direction he also received twenty grenades.

The relief team leader and Blue Team leader discussed the situation for a moment, while the gunners gathered up more ammunition spheres. They were drastically low on firepower at the moment.

“You’re a sorcerer with celestial affinity, right guardsman?” asked the relief team leader while looking to Scott.

“Yes, sir!” he replied professionally.

“Good, take this,” he tossed crystal tipped spear toward him.

Scott caught it, and looked at it in mild confusion. “Sir?”

“It’s a spear, but it also has a high-level celestial affinity. Use it to boost your damage potential,” said the black armored man. He wore a golden shield on the left side of his chest plate, signifying his command position. This was a high-ranking enforcer. “You’ll need to return it after the engagement has ended.”

“Understood, sir,” said Scott. He had no real knowledge of how to use a spear properly, but if it boosted his magical damage potential then that was good enough. He chugged a mana potion, and then to his surprise he received another from the relief team commander.

“Any friend of Greelak’s,” said the armored man before turning away.

Scott blinked then grinned. Greelak was popular as ever, it seemed.

The current phase of the insertion strategy came to a rapid end, only an hour after the relief team arrived. Hundreds of additional soldiers on site, made it impossible for the enemy within the city to hold out. The armor knights were sturdy, but they were also quite stupid. There was no attempt to hide or flee on their part. They simply attacked anything they could find.

Destroying all of the Storm Tyrant’s forces in town was simple once Valkovia had an appropriate number of assets in the field. The enemy numbers outside of the town was a different story, however. That required tactics that were quite a bit more heavy-handed.

Two hours after the destruction of the internal monster forces in the city, Valkovian ships appeared overhead. High-explosive weapons were dropped all around the city to destroy large numbers of the attacking monsters. By the end of the day, the enemy was routed. The Storm Tyrant ordered his beasts to retreat at all possible speed.

It was not until night fall that Scott learned why Valkovia did not bomb the enemy outside the walls earlier. Magical explosives of that type were expensive to produce in numbers large enough for a total area bombardment. Had the attempt to retake the town failed the entire area, including the town, would have been leveled to prevent the enemy from gaining a new stronghold. By reclaiming the station town, a lot of lives were saved.

Still, the Storm Tyrant’s forces were still out there beyond the walls. Not all of them would have been destroyed. Sweep teams were formed. Come first light, it would be time to clean up the scorched land beyond town.