Intermezzo

"This is the famous Roadhouse?"

"It is, Madame," the translator answered.

Christina gave the walls a long stare. They should come down as fast as the last ones had done.

"Mount the guns and invite us there!"

"Should we not talk with them first, Madame?"

"They'll talk whenever I demand."

"As you say, Madame."

The tripods were assembled almost as quickly as the gates fell. The rest should have been slaughter, but the barbarians defending the fort had weapons Christina didn't recognize. In the end they failed to force their way in, and she even lost one of her two launchers and a hovercraft to a flamethrower before they could return fire with shrapnel grenades.

She had to satisfy herself with shelling the fort from a distance where her troops were safe. After a couple of hours they had depleted almost a third of their grenades, but at that time the flames from inside were rising so high she could see them over the walls. They shot anyone trying to escape through the gates until the idiots inside finally learned the lesson.

"You can stop firing now," Christina said after she had made her mind up about leaving.

They returned down the road, but not faster than that she could personally oversee the deploying of mines over the entire road for more than two kilometers. The monkeys needed some more education. There was always a price for denying Christina Ulfsdotir what she wanted.