“Three hundred drones designated mender support. Use column’s advance as cover. Prioritize trench and burrow construction. Construct defilades from firing positions at thirteen-degree elevation.”

“Received. Survival rankings given single adjustment, yes? Yes. Delvers on the field. Lower importance during battle. Place above soldier.”

“Received.”

“Scouts under fire. Sixteen voices silenced in third probe.”

“Withdraw behind the ridge. Withdraw first, second, fourth and sixth probes. Do not entice their artillery.”

“Received.”

“Scentcrafters signalling completion of the base notes. Crafters signalling completion of third stake checks. Request positioning.”

Skthveraachk passed the request to the thinkers as her armored hull rung with the Lieutenant’s bass song. The lifts were kept deactivated, power only flowing to her visor and communications within the throne for now. Fuel was limited. Preserve until necessary. Solovyova was shouting, her fingers up at the crest of her ear, passing her own instructions. Blue shells milled around the stretched projector table, pointing and moving dots upon the false-light surface. And Hathan, his arms laced, was trying to hide the white clench of his hands.

The link was pounding within her, even through the reflective silver planes of the throne. It beat. It stomped. It called. The ground shook as the elongated flatbeds carried the black towers like thrusting scythes, rolling through the hastily erected defenses.

The Major spat another globule to the gravely ground, her coat swinging wide as she turned on Hathan and the table. Running a hand across her throat, Solovyova went to stuff more of her brown powder between her lips as the Commander leant across the table.

The fingers were back on her ear in moments, listening to a chatter Skthveraachk could not distinguish.

The quick salute exchanged saw the Major depart, and the Hathan’s attention back on the Queen. She bid the thinkers advance from their hidden holes and positions, to speed the reception and delivery of their orders. She did not need the image. It was brought up on the map regardless, shimmering blue images.

“It has been prepared for. They cannot stop us once we are in melee.”

Concern from the male. Disgust from his Lieutenant, only when his back was to her.

“We will have a few hundred lengths of cover behind the ridge before the slope. Then, many will die. But we have sixteen thousand. They will not kill enough.” Relay drones and links were webbing across the entire area, bodies piling into heaps and sectioning into groupings. Another request for guidance. Another report of anger from the humanites at their cargo. Another dismissal to the thinkers. Prepare to move. “The Coalition will hesitate. We will not.” Hathan knew what he was asking. Knew the weight of it, the size and the shape. When he saluted her in turn, Skthveraachk folded her synthetic scythes across her thorax out of choice, not obligation.

“For the Sovereignty, Hathan-Commander.” For her species. Rattling and drumming filled the air as she dipped her head beneath the arch of the station, giving the throne just enough power to provide a tenthlength of lift. Feeling the added weight of bodies clambering against and atop her as she rejoined the frothing masses of glossy bodies without, the sound of the humanites shouting within and running to their places around lost under the music filling her eyes and antennae and core. “Queen is available. Redistribute tasking.”

“Ambers have silenced seven. Accidental closeness-“

“Disregard.”

“Affirmative. Thinkers have distributed shielding totems at eighteen-length distances.”

“Increase to twenty. Plasma impacts are of a seven-length radius. Ensure no two totems may be eliminated in single strike.”

“Received.”

“War Queen.” The heart of her silvery beast was beating more fervently as the crimson giant swam through the sea of bodies to her side. Fifteen sets of Coalition plating, sealed with spit and acid, encompassing the male’s wide frame. Like a cruder version of her own armor, hugging to his center and spilling out like a skirt upon his legs. The glare of her visor gifting her the sight of the former Vhersckaahlhn’s heart, thundering and striking in perfect mirror of her own. “The center. Us, together.”

“Yes. But only after the wings have formed.” They chanted of their home. Of blue skies instead of red. War Queen. She felt her jaws clamp, but wished for a humanite to fill them, not the soldier. “They adapt. They will expect an attack at the center. We will swarm and let them believe us mindless, but divert our blow to their flanks.”

“You will remain behind me. You will not suffer another injury.”

“You will remain beside me. We will strike as one.” No argument offered. She could hear the screaming already, the throaty and high-pitched noises from males and females both. The Queen could not order calmness as the noise spread across her army, not when the tempo had become a fevered allegro. Restraint. Refocus. The totems were spread out, passed from claw to claw. Four drones to each, carrying the weight. Ridge’s rise awaited them. Slope rose up ahead. They advanced, without formation or column. They advanced.

They passed the lines of Sovereignty, knelt before the female who’s pale shell was longer and more pure than any Skthveraachk had seen. The gleaming cup held aloft in her hands as the soldiers bent their heads, adhering to her song and the scents which flowed out of the chalice. The sight was gone. Lost, as drones rose over soldiers, riding atop them to cover those without armor or helm with their bodies. Her gaze traveled instead through the masses to the last scouting group left. Hidden within the shade and branches of the alien trees sprouting from the dead planet.

“Assessment?”

“Skthveraachk Queen means if there is any new danger besides weapons which will soon silence hundreds?” The scout’s humor was a dim color, but his fear was equal to his levity. “Plasma throwers are heated. Ready to fire. Advise all speed.”

“No rearing.” The command was sent out across the entirety of the swarm, and they echoed it into a mantra. “All speed. No rearing. Six legs.” They reached the slope, and the throne shook as she increased the pressure of her claws to each pedal. The song had begun even without her prompting, the colony knowing her intent, Skthveraachk’s children feeling their purpose. Their music was not of fear, not even for those who would soon be gone. They could be stalled. They could be silenced. But they had never been stopped. They could not be stopped. They would not be stopped. The Queen’s eyes were drawn upwards to the foreign sky, and to the two white orbs hanging high above them like the eyes of some humanite titan. Cold and hollow. Her mandibles chittered, and her voice gave meaning to the feeling.

“We have feared, and we have wondered, and we have sought to know; are we seen? Are we heard? When our final note comes, here in this place beyond the sky of stars, does it carry us to His side?” She floated above the ground on the weaponized sled, but still could she feel the world shake. Drones at the head. Soldiers behind. No column, no organization to hold unity of direction. There was only one direction. “He does!” He does. He does! “Even here, he hears us! He sees us! Our music calls, and the Composer watches all with those who have gone before us! Even here!” Even here. Even here! “Hear our wrath! Hear our joy! We die for our species! We die for our world!” Hear it. Hear it! “This is our purpose! This is our role!” Around the AVs, between the formations of humanites. A drone who had seen the sun set on her mother’s reign and rise over an alien horizon was the first to crest the hill, and the light blinded it. “Sing! Sing! Forward! Forward!”

They spilled forth. Eight hundred lengths to the rows of Coalition who would be waiting for them. Lances could barely melt chitin at this range; the first hundred were not even over the pinnacle of the ridge before the air was full of beams regardless. Reckless. Useless.

“Shields! Raise! Shields! Raise!” The soldiers would not rear. They poured their energy into their legs, one after another toppling over the hill and falling like an obsidian stream down the slope. But the drones atop them raised their forelegs, and brought up the squares, the circles, the misshapen lumps of carapace and repurposed armor. A layered wall of protection for their mounted sibling, and the next and next behind them. Beams of white struck the strapped metal and dissipated. Beams of white struck bodies, and smoke sizzled out of slowly melting holes.

“Plasma! Scatter! Plasma! Scatter!” Bright lights down beneath them, reflecting off the water’s surface dotted with the vehicles, vessels, escaping the town of Guir. Plumes of venting energy between the rooftops. Pillars of roaring fire in hazy spats of color across the channel.

The Band was a distraction, but it was equally vital. Six hundred over the hill. Rocks were launched from the town in the distance, boiling, melting into a green paste more liquid than solid, and fell from on high. She relayed what was possible through the ranks, the throne groaning out protest at the steep ascent, and prepared for the adjustments. Scouts tracked projected arcs. Observers relayed. Those that could avoid the sites did. Those unable to move threw aside their shields or riders, to preserve what could be saved as the warbling hissing filled the air.

“Eighty-seven silenced. Artillery strike. Multiple impacts.”

“Avoid remnant pools. Force enemy readjustment.”

“Confirmed.” The throne reached the zenith just in time for a severed scythe to whizz past the Queen’s vision. Nearby soldier placed himself between Skthveraachk and the closest formed crater in time to block the superheated rock fragments from making contact with her shell. Alien shouts and pleading mired the melody of their music, and became a counterpoint to their unity. “Totems reaching crest.”

“Ninety-four silenced. Twelve confirmed batteries.” A beam struck her. The readout barely blipped a percent’s drop as the lattice shield shimmered. Too far, too weak. Skthveraachk tightened her gaster, refusing to let her scents leak. Not yet. Not yet. Forward. Forward. “Eighteen silenced at front line. Beam distance becoming lethal.”

“Artillery focus is at the ridge. Condense formation at five hundred lengths.”

“Kinetic weapons are adjusting.” Fear. Focus. Drones had begun to dig holes and lines behind her as bodies flowed around them. Ditches for menders, for scouts, guarded from the lances if not the green explosions rocking the landscape around them. Forms tightening protectively around her, attendants and menials to screen her from the coming danger. “Front line at five hundred lengths. Sixty-eight silenced. Artillery strike.” Close enough for the humanites to see? Close enough for them to register? No option to draw closer. Kinetics were spoken of like sky-sent. Like chaerilites. Like death. Had she understood them? Would it work? Time. Time. Now.

“Raise totems. Advance! Advance!”

Pillars of chitin, bone and metal. Bindings of skin and cords, made and given to them by the Sovereignty. Their own towers, pathetic mimicries of the great black spires rising in the distance, but with identical purpose. Scythes, cut from corpses, oozing red as blood seeped from around them. Needed to keep the aliens in pain. To keep them crying out, naked and battered, where they hung suspended lengths above as the menials carried them forward. Sixty totems. Sixty captives. Sixty bared Coalition humanites, spread across the breadth of their sprinting charge, screaming or begging or incoherently babbling. Their dome. Their shield. Skthveraachk held her breath and sealed her vents, a shattered soldier’s corpse snapping and frying beneath her throne as she surged over the terrain. The massive tubes turned. Fixed upon them. Aimed. Sat.

Silent.

“ADVANCE! ADVANCE!” They cared.

“Seventy-nine silenced. Artillery impact.” Every humanite a soldier, a worker, a Queen, a Colony.

“Forty-seven silenced. Artillery impact. Throwers are prioritizing wave’s front. Avoiding totems.” Lonely, disparate, singular humanite beings. The beams thinned, focused forward and away from their captives. The kinetics did not roar. Not even six hundred lost yet. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful.

Her Band was buzzing. A bleating, bothersome sidenote to the pride and the power seeping from the Queen’s every hole. Discord at the rear of the swarm. The chanting enveloped them.

“Designate AV’s friendly! Spray if needed! Advance! No obstacles!” Four hundred lengths. Some of the lead soldiers were signalling exhaustion. They only needed reach the buildings and barricades. Push on. Only some would collapse. “Form triple column at five hundred lengths! Tighten shields!”

“Ninety silenced at the front. Lancer fire intense.” Reaching through the link, her eyes opened to a spiralling menial blown clear of a soldier’s back. The ground, green with grass and growth, blackened by bodied where they had fallen. Advance continued. But was slowed. Their makeshift shields were only good for ten or fewer strikes. Three white lines struck from a square cut into a building’s side, and her vision was lost as the soldier’s head was blown to pieces. Boiled from the inside. Returning to herself, the Queen clacked her mandibles, and felt the air steam as the first of the thicker bolts of light flew from the suspended Dragoons behind them. Melting a hole into the stone and metal of the town’s barrier barricade.

“Prioritize totem dispersal. Get captives to the front.” The pillars dipped and swung, the menials hugging the bases moving backwards and forwards as they carried the precious cargo down the hillside. Blood was thick in the air, the smell of it, the taste. Hers, and theirs. Skthveraachk soldier threw his head up and snapped the air, reveling in the budding wildness that would soon border on a fledgling frenzy. “Adjust shields. Elevation. Mark.”

“Received.” Menders were dragging wounded to fresh ditches. Soldiers tore off the shells of the dead. Menials scrambled to pick up fallen metal shields and take their places on the backs of the more valuable drones. A distant wail was made as a mender decapitated a sister of her clutch, moving to the next in need of aid or silencing. “Three hundred lengths to perimeter. Forward observers indicate movement. Kinetics repositioning.”

“Disregard. Keep totems raised, humanites will not fire-“

The Commander’s voice was within her. Around her. Her silver castle moved with her as she spun it to the side, signalling her scouts.

“No comprehension! No comprehension! Say again! Say again!” Rudeness. Necessary. She called for her eyes, for every eye she had, trying to locate the threat. A whirring, like that of the Wyverns, but smaller and more numerous. Wings that did not beat, but still carried weight. A menial spotted them, in the leftmost of the three forming columns that had slowed under the deaths they suffered, but not halted. Coming over the barricades and from out of the town. Boxes and orbs, floating on the circular wings that glowed and lifted them through the air. Barely the size of a soldier’s head. Threat? Threat? “No identification. Unknown hostile.”

Ten lengths in the air, perhaps fifteen. Hovering, spreading out in a screen around the perimeter of the town. Her columns signalled confusion. The Queen obeyed the Hathan. Her columns signalled death. The Queen screamed her fury.

“Hundred seventy-four silenced… eighty-six, ninety-two.”

“Disperse! Disperse!” Panic. Fear. The barricades were in sight, the helmets of the Coalition atop faces streaked wet with the fluids from their eyes able to be made out by the most skilled of scouts who darted over holes and dived beneath bodies falling. It did not matter. Tens, tens of tens, a hundred and more beams cracked out every beat from the front. The hovering cubed rained lightning from on high, down where the shields and armor would not protect. Two hundred died in the first fifteen beats. Two hundred more followed the next. One hundred lengths. The charge faltered. They had been stopped. “Hathan-Commander! Identify!”

Danger markers. Death markers. Corpses piled in a crescent as they reached spitter-distance of the town. Spitters. They needed spitters.

“Call spitters! Twenty clusters, fifteen…twenty! Twenty menial support!” Pull some from the menders and ditch digging. They did not need to preserve the wounded. They needed to kill these machine monsters. A female was pleading for offspring, or some manner of broodmate, on the totem next to Skthveraachk. Distractions. Discordance was rattling the link. “Confirm!”

“Received. Spitters arriving to front in sixty beats.”

“Eighty-four silenced. Artillery impact.”

“One-hundred sixty silenced.” The soldiers continued to try and climb over, around, the rising mound of split gasters and boiling blood. The fragments of shell and chitin. Unable to advance. Unable to advance.

“Designate corpse-wall a defensive barrier. Reinforce. Spread along the sides, dig trench behind!” Reinforce. Wait. The swollen bodies of the spitters had begun to flock down the rocky, sparsely foliaged hill. Pounding after pounding crash rang like falling mountain stones as the hovering tanks on the ridge struck blow after blow into the cannons and their supporting stands.

The Major shouted in her left side. The Hathan sung in her left.

“Sixty-two silenced. Twenty spitters silenced. Artillery impact.” Thirty beats away. Stones and mud were thrown into the gaps between the spasming, twitching, or stilled bodies that had rose and fallen. The impassable line visualized by the dead marking the barrier of lancer fire. Terrain leveled out beneath her, and her clenched gaster felt fuller than the Queen could imagine. She was at three hundred. Skthveraachk could see with her own eyes the approaching wall. Two more beams struck the air before her, and the readout trembled down to ninety. “Sixty-six silenced. Artillery impact.” A menial evaporated into orange mist and black chunks from the base of the nearby totem. Another rushed to fill its place. The bound female pulled and thrust on the spikes through her legs, screaming as the pillar dipped forward only to be brought up once more. Skthveraachk slammed her claws to the floor, spurring the throne forward. This was their role. This was their purpose. The first spitters had arrived.

“Target Dhrohnes! Prioritize Dhrohnes!” Stomachs churned. Bile pooled. Gasters condensed as trajectories were signalled and the writhing mass of onyx bodies parted, the globules of acid flung out into the air. Hit. The Dhrohne sizzled and fell. Hit. Wing snapped free and the box crashed down into waiting scythes. Miss. Buzzing thing dove to the side. Miss. Another flew straight upward. Ten more repositioned to fill the gap, and when they fired again, it was only for the threat. The spitters. Sixteen were gone before they had a chance to inhale for second throw. “Menial screen! Spiiters, reposition after each throw. Cluster projectiles five to a Dhrohne-“

Distantly, she felt the Dragoons slip back behind the ridge. Distracted, the Queen felt the need to see with her own eyes, to turn back to the totem now behind and above as their humanites briefly withdrew. The sound that came was all but identical to the first she had ever heard with her own body, how it turned her core to jelly and made her puke up from both stomachs within the throne, tearing through her as it had torn through layers of her nest in an instant. Menials around her collapsed. Soldiers rolled and scurried, disoriented. Behind the formed left column, there was a scar in the land. A cone of orange and red and black. A single kinetic had spoken. A swathe of once moving bodies had turned into a smear across the rocks. Her gaster unclenched. Fear flooded from Skthveraachk in a wave.

“Six-hundred fourteen voices silenced. Unknown attacker.”

“Scout lines two and three gone.”

“Scent eradicated from rear section.”

“Six totems gone.” Something was biting her arm. Her eyes were locked to the splintered remains of the totem that had been behind her, the only mark of the captive that had been upon it the remains of a leg, hung from spike of scythe. The crimson behemoth aside her was pulling her sled nearer the wall. Balls, smooth and round, yet with smallest teeth, protruded by fives from his armor. Through his eyes, Skthveraachk saw the ten and give nodules buried in streaking likes across the hull of her throne. The readout held at ninety percent. It had not mattered.

Kinetics. Kinetics. Death. Death. There could have been no better time. No worse time. Out from her came the pain of the impact, the fear, the rage and the death. Queen in danger. Queen in danger.

“Queen in danger!”

“QUEEN IN DANGER!” The wall collapsed. The orders were ignored. The swarm would not be stopped. Mad with her pheromones and instincts, soldiers and menials and scouts and spitters and all threw themselves forward. Formed three-high stacks for the smallest to leap from and tackle the dhrohnes from the sky. Spread themselves wide to soak three, four, five lancer blasts for their siblings behind to draw ever closer. No direction. Only forward. No decision. Only forward.

“Hathan-Commander!”

“Your help, Hathan-Commander!” No pride. Only forward. “Assist us, Hathan-Commander!” No regret. Only forward. Two hundred more were gone. The first reached the barricades, and was impaled upon the spikes jutting from the sandbags. The next climbed over its corpse, and fell the same. Streets heavily defended. Buildings and structures, less. Focus. Focus.

“Totems forward!” No longer effective. Whatever spell they had was spent. Whatever hesitation caused, evaporated. Now they were but poles. Six length long poles. Adapt. Adapt. “Through the wall! Through the bodies! Forward! Forward!” Lances rained from above. Lances spat from ahead. Hovering death-spitters were pulled down, rose higher, focused their energies on the spitters now desperately trying to dive away from impossible precise beams of light. The Queen struck with her scythe, knocking the former Vhersckaahlhn from her. “Release! Form around throne! Totems down, totems pointed!”

“Protect the Queen! Protect the Queen!” They wanted her out. Back, and away. They flocked to her, massed around her. Spikes were thrust from the waiting street entrance, stabbing like scythes through those who managed to reach the entrance. Long and pointed. Skthveraachk had her own. Bloodied, dead, screaming, silent, the poles with their captives kicking or flailing at the ends were lowered horizontal as each arrived. A line of sticks. Of false scythes. Of spears. “Sixty-eight silenced. Seventy-one silenced.”

“I am Skthveraachk Queen! I am Skthveraachk-Colony! My song travels between worlds! My scythes taste alien and sky-sent and Gods! I am Skthveraachk Queen!” The line between music and mayhem was gone. The calls were as much screamed as sung. They would be weaker at the sides. Stronger at the center. Peel them all. “I am War Queen! I am WAR QUEEN! FORWARD!”

They burst through the wall of bodies. She, burst through the wall. A crimson giant alongside her, a swarm of menials hugging and clinging above and burning below. Bodies hung from stakes were thrust forward, four drones to a pole, thrusting them into the burning strikes of the barricade. Ends tore through the sandbags. Splintered on the thass barriers. Shoved up and through bodies ducking behind cover. Totems, turned into scythes, turned into ramps. They struck over the barricade, they dug into the rocky ground, and tens after tens of her children swarmed over them, tumbling and spilling into the masses of Coalition behind. They were in.

“Disperse! First and third column, flanking!” The center surged. The center climbed over the poles and threw themselves upon the first humanite seen. These Coalition did not run. They did not flee. Sharpened blades fit to the end of their lances were thrust up, forward, cutting open thoraxes and severing limbs. One fell. Three took its place. The humanite fell. None could replace it. “Around the sides! Around the sides!”

“Received!” They descended like a cloud, red and glistening, shining as the hovering boxes emblazoned with the seal of the Sovereignty clashed with the dwindling others. No longer did beams fall on them, turned now to fending off the rival technology. They slammed into one another. They flew off as others gave chase. Debris fell in burning heaps around her, from the scrap of the dhrohnes and from the melting brick and steel as the Major poured shot after shot into the perimeter. Lances protruded from windowed gaps high above them as they followed the building’s curve to the next street section. And the next. Skthveraachk slammed down her left scythe into the rock, and spun the carriage of her sled in an arc. Coalition soldiers in the weaker blockade had only moment to shoot. They took it. Skthveraachk’s shields dropped to sixty, and her hull crunched on bone and breast as she threw herself through the gap. Tearing a hole in the tertiary entrance, through which her colony innumerable poured. Alien thrust its tipped lance for her sled. She put the first length and a half of her scythe through its skull.

“Swarm! Swarm! Avoid center, do not advance! Locate clearings! Locate emplacements!” She was within herself. She was without herself. The Queen was all, felt all, saw all. She was roaring forward on her lifted throne, breaking through the wall of a structure and out the other side, swinging her scythes to the side of a stationary tank laying in wait between towers. She was thundering forward on four legs, her red arms and armored body hacking away at flesh and wooden beams, bringing the second floor of a structure toppling down around her. She was four menials who had pinned a male to the ground with their stubby mandibles, watching him shake and claw for his lancer. She was the soldier above him, stabbing again and again into the upper section of his torso, where heart was meant to be. She was dying as she stumbled into killing-zones set up between alleyways. She was tearing off a female’s armor to use as shield, charging one of the stationary plasma throwers only to collapse from a beam she never saw coming. She was tipping over the demon Kinetics and hacking their operators into unrecognizable pieces. She was dragging aliens kicking and screaming from their holes and peeling them open under the smoking sky. And she was surrounding cleared, wide swathes of land within the township. Raising her claw to break free the cap of the cylinders she had been given, waving them over her heads as she saw their light and purple mist steam free.

Traces of conversation made it through the Band. She pushed, struggled, fought with the end of the searing barrel as it let off another discharge that caused her shield to shriek as the exhaust alone dropped its integrity to thirty. The Queen had lodged herself between the street and the weapon’s end, forcing it up and away from the stream of her children at alleyway’s opposite. Wheels and levers and mechanics whirred within her suit as she cut the lifts, her weight pushed back by the tank’s advance. Queen in danger? No. The sanguine soldier was airborne behind the vehicle. Stabbing his scythes into the immobilized head. Tearing open and free a jagged hole in its dome, as one of her attendants threw itself into the gap without care for how the metal edges ripped open its vents and legs.

“Protect Queen! Protect Queen!” Its scythes were small. Its pale body, diminutive. The wild thrashing, biting and cutting was more than enough to silence the alien cries that burbled out of the interior. The red blood that bubbled out of the holes and gaps, sinking to the stone pathways beneath. Tinted orange as the music of the drone, joyous in its role performed, fell quiet soon after. Skthveraachk felt a pang of sudden sadness, trying to understand why. Only momentarily realizing the shared history with the twinned attendant who had thrown itself into the fray, before sending a pulsing request to be reminded of such later when the combat was finished. Her lifts reactivated just as the thrumming overhead magnified into rushing of air, the first of the Wyverns spinning its way like a leaf in the wind over the purple smoke. Its sides opened. Shimmering lights extended. Soldier after soldier, the Sovereignty leapt from the vessel, falling tens of lengths through the air unaided, only to strike ground and charge forward without any hesitation.

The Commander’s voice was strained.

“Your troops are being landed.” Two more Wyverns shook the buildings as they passed overhead. Heading for the other markers. Another three signals went up, awaiting delivery, the Coalition falling back and back from street to street as she recalled her soldiers to safer alcoves. Though ensuring every single Kinetic had not a Coalition member within twenty lengths. Exterior fighting continued between the dhrohnes. She reallocated a few hundred menials to assist the menders. “I am regrouping my soldiers. We will join your troops.”

The cackling of beams was resuming. Trading, between windows, streets and divots within stone craftwork. She wanted to argue. She wanted to protest. When Skthveraachk requested, and received, the preliminary casualty numbers, that want seemed hollow.

“Received. We will await your order.”

“Twenty-two silenced, faderise section of town. Coalition grouping within three-tiered building.”

“Mark and withdraw.” The sounds of protest were barely audible in the pounding symphony as well. Safe havens were located. Secure burrows and buildings were indicated and coated with signals. Skthveraachk pried her scythe from the remains of the still vibrating tank, spinning her throne about as her screen of drones readjusted themselves to her sides. Soldier behind her fell into his place. Procession moved. Forward. Forward. Always forward.

“Sixteen gone. Building collapse, deliberate sabotage.”

“Received.” Explosions. Calls. The arrival and departure of the Wyverns overhead, and the distant booming of it all and more from the town across the channel smelling of salt and ammonia. Nearly eighteen hundred lengths. Nearly twenty-two hundred voices that would never sing again. A spur in her shell, nearly severing her neck. Nearly. Guir was theirs.

Guir was hers.