113 Going Public

"Base four has fallen!" the operator declares, and I nod.

Of course it has fallen, I Rewound time at least twenty times to make sure that this particular assault was perfect.

I may have underestimated the sheer amount of information I need to remember to micro-manage all the ongoing assaults at once despite our tactic being simple and the same for every base. We would deploy the Jammers, soften the targets and destroy the enemy defenses with well-placed Hammer shells then charge with the tanks to eliminate any survivors.

It has worked flawlessly on some bases that were nothing more than outposts with little defenses, but it got a bit tougher on other fronts. Base four is a good example; it's one of the areas that fought the most. If I recall correctly, this particular base used to belong to the Wolfheart Family, so it's not surprising that they had access to old weapon caches that belonged to the previous owners.

Their suicidal tactics, like strapping as many orbs as possible on a BirdFolk to drop them onto the tanks, was sometimes surprisingly effective. The tanks are tough and almost unbreakable, but they are not invincible since they suffer from the same flaw as everyone in the Order.

Our shields are hard to break through, but an attack that is strong enough will expand all its ammunition in a heartbeat. It's less of a problem now that we have spatial storage, but it's not really fixing the problem, it's just delaying it.

These BirdFolks turned into bombs where devastating, outright dived into the tanks. Their plan likely was to fly and throw them from a smaller distance, but the sudden deceleration broke the glass shells of the ancient orbs, and the bombing squad exploded mid-air. Sometimes, a few balls exploded, and the BirdFolks lost control, causing them to crash onto my vehicles and creating a powerful amalgam of spells that would rival the power of a Carter Bomb.

The screams of burning Legionaries over the comms will haunt me for a long time, but I pressed on and Rewound time until everything was perfect. As a result, the battles looked like well-choreographed movies instead of real fights. The bombings were extremely precise and took out critical infrastructure, the tanks moved like a well-oiled machine and weaved through the desperate attacks of the Stonecrusher soldiers while taking the lives of our enemies in drove.

In the end, we don't even have light injuries. But maybe it's too early to rejoice since we haven't destroyed all our objectives yet and there's still a lot to do if we want to win this war.

But those couple of battles showed that I was right in pursuing the creation of the Spell Jammer for all this time. The soldiers of the Empire were almost defenseless without their spells, the few that resisted either had some ineffective artifacts or stockpiles of those spell-in-an-orb things.

I knew that the Jammers were going to be effective, but I wasn't expecting them to be such a game changer. I can understand why the Enforcers banned everything related to them. If the information got out, then all their weapons would be rendered useless overnight.

It's too bad for them that I have Spell Jammers, and I have a lot of them!

"What's the status on the captured bases?" I ask one of the operators.

"As far as we know, there were no survivors." He replies.

I nod, it's good to hear, but it's better if we operate under the assumption that someone might have slipped through the net and escaped.

Either way, the Stonecrusher Empire must be aware of us now. They may not know who we are, but they know that an army is out to get them.

"Good. Keep the area under control for a little bit, seize everything of value and destroy what we can't take before ordering the men to come back." I order.

We don't have the numbers to occupy any bases, so it's better if we deny resources from the enemy. Destroying the bases to render them useless while stealing supplies is an excellent way to disturb Imperial operations and lower their morale, not to mention that they lost quite a bit of men today. It might not be a lot compared to the total number of their soldiers, but it's still a significant loss.

I then glance at the main screen, only two bases are remaining. And those are veritable fortresses with towering walls and multiple barriers. There's a lot of well-armed soldiers inside, and they apparently have a large stockpile of weapons at their disposal if the meteors they keep throwing at our tanks are anything to go by.

But this problem isn't hard to solve. Just use the HaMmEr!

I order a penetrator to be fired near the base of a large wall. The resulting explosion is enough to destroy the already damaged wall, and the falling construct takes a large group of soldiers with it. It also opens the way towards the enemy camp, so I fire yet another penetrator to destroy another layer of magical barrier. Their barriers are unusually hard to crack compared to what we've encountered so far, but this base must be important if we take its size and the sheer number of soldiers inside into account.

"Keep up the good fight!" I say to motivate the Legionaries manning the tanks.

"Order the ones who assaulted base thirteen to finish things up and go to base seven as reinforcements," I say. Base thirteen was the military equivalent of a small cabin in the woods, so it was effortless to raze it completely. Looting it should be almost finished anyway, so it's better if the Legionaries help their brother-in-arms at the massive complex that is base seven.

The operator nods, and soon enough another group of Legionaries appears not too far away from base seven. They create their tanks in a few seconds, and the deadly vehicles charge the base from another front. I hope that this pincer attack will make the assault easier, but we never know what might happen in magical warfare.

"Do we have any reports on what we brought back so far?" I ask.

"Not for now, the Administration is still going through the loot. But the initial reports show that we have mostly weapons and equipment." Terrence answers.

I nod, it looks like the Empire expected a short war against the Freedom Movement before it moved its troops back to its borders.

But we put a wrench in those plans and intervened. I need to know what has happened to Riley and were the Werewolf is. Steve must know something; he has to.

Our operations will also help us gauge the reaction of the Freedom Movement and their capabilities in the field if they decide to intervene.

Furthermore, our actions are bound to make some waves. Our Spell Jammers should make spying impossible but we never know who might be watching us so we should be careful.

I know for sure that the Oracle is watching, but let's hope that she doesn't intervene for now. If we're lucky, she will not take part in our conflict against the Stonecrusher, but I somehow doubt that it will be the case.

But let's stop thinking about the inevitable battle to the death between the Oracle and I and focus on the present. The new tanks are bombarding the area, and the enemy doesn't panic. Instead, a small group detach from the main offensive and rushes to the side that just went under attack. The soldiers are swift despite their lack of spells, and they soon reach what remains of the outer wall of base seven.

The tanks fire their mighty payload, and the barrier that's protecting the small contingent is barely holding on. However, that brief moment between the two shots was enough to allow the enemy to deploy a curious artifact. The central part seems to be a long stick on an iron tripod, and four engraved wooden petals rotate at the top of the magical device. The soldiers grab a handful of blue material, I can barely see what it is on the screen, but it seems to be blue Magicite. They pour the crystals into a small bowl atop the stick, and the petal begins to rotate furiously.

Light begins to gather on the engravings of the artifact but the construct, along with the soldiers who carried it, is vaporized by a shot from one of our tanks. From the looks of things, the enemy understands that enchanted items are immune to the devastating effects of the Spell Jammers. However, it's clear that they don't have anything even remotely threatening. The artifacts they use look unwieldy and the soldiers are struggling to use them properly, so I'm confident that those devices are old relics that were brought out of storage in an emergency.

I applaud them from figuring this out so quickly, but they are fighting literal tanks with what might as well be a magical equivalent of a BB gun.

In short, their StRuGgLe Is HoPeLeSs!

However, the fact that the soldiers are fighting to the death is a problem. From what I've seen, the Families wouldn't hesitate to surrender and bargain if they were faced with a situation like this one. But the soldiers of the Empire are relentless; they barely react as large swathes of their comrades are wiped out, they put all their beings in operating those useless devices from a bygone era.

They must have realized that they aren't doing any damage, but they keep fighting. I've seen this kind of dedication before, and it was with my own men. It looks like the propaganda of the Empire is on par with our own, and that's quite an accomplishment. But it also means that we can't let our guard down since an imperial soldier would likely try to kill one of our own even if it meant losing their lives in the process.

It makes taking prisoners quite tricky.

But we're lucky on that front because we aren't TaKiNg AnY!

A group of defendants armed with what looks like a mix between a crossbow and a sword is wiped out by two shells at the same moment. The battle seems to progress in our favor as the enemy is steadily losing ground. The quality of the equipment used by the enemy is also quickly degrading, some soldiers are wielding swords clad in lightning that look so ancient that a light breeze might destroy them, and a group of Minotaurs turned into an ersatz of artillery since they chuck large boulders over the wall. I don't know if they can see the results of their efforts, but they aren't doing any damage.

My attention then shifts towards the Legionaries. The tanks are continuously going forward, not impeded in the slightest by the futile attempts of the Stonecrusher soldiers to stop them. A single blast from the vehicle is enough to vaporize an entire squadron. The smaller groups are eliminated with the machine guns while the vehicle tears through the enemy defenses like a hot knife through butter.

It won't take long before they reach the middle of the encampment, where the remaining Stonecrusher forces are converging. At this point, most of the soldiers are running for their lives, a few of them are picking up the weapons of their barely dead comrades, and they try to stop the assault only to share the same fate as the last wielder of these garbage weapons.

I can't help but smile at the overview of the battlefield.

Maybe the Stonecrusher Empire will be easier to destroy than I first thought.