Cannon Omake: Pandemonium
CW:Implied sexual assault
NAZ Border post/FOB:Isthmus of corinth.
NAZ Border post/FOB:Isthmus of corinth.
Ethan woke to the sound of gunfire. For a moment utter confusion dominated his world, his first thought was that it might be the damned commies, but that was impossible, with the famine and the pox going around they should be in no state to be attacking them, how could they… A loud crash and the sound of metal slamming into and subsequently breaking wood followed by distant deep crack snapped Ethan out of his confusion and allowed him to push down his panic.
"must be the damned helots staging some kind of revolt". He thought
But how did they get by his informants? Another crash, followed by another rolling cracking noise. Ethan went for his assault rifle. Quickly cracking open the case it was in and pulling it out, loading a magazine and racking the slide. As ready as he was going to be he went for his door, cursing the heavy unwieldy lock on it.
Finally wrenching it open he was greeted by a scene from hell. Bits of his men, Attican nobility and uptimers both were strewn about on the ground, there was blood and viscera everywhere. Some of the larger chunks screamed for their mothers or their gods or for help, others just screamed and some, worst of all, were silent.
Belatedly Ethan noticed that the wooden barracks where they'd locked the thralls in for the night were on fire and that a keening noise originated from it.
"Probably not the helots then"
Ducking back in Ethan considered his options, just as another salvo of what he guessed might be cannonfire slammed into the ground in front of him, bits of dirt and bloody mud went flying as what seemed like an oversized can of buckshot slammed into the ground, He could hear the masonry of his accommodations chipping. Followed by a considerably louder noise as something slammed into his office. Bits of stone exploded from a wall, it was only Ethans position near to the doorway that saved him from being pelted. Ethan decided at that moment that the prudent course of action might be to advance backwards.
Rushing out the doorway and behind what remained of the walls of his office, hopefully they could provide some cover, he rushed towards the treeline. Cursing all the way that they'd cleared it away for a killing field, which had clearly done them absolutely no good.
Just as Ethan was about to reach the comparative safety of the forest he felt a sharp pain in his upper arm. Stumbling he just managed to right himself, sprinting the last leg into the forest.
Ethan did not know how long he ran nor did he know where in particular he was headed. For now it was away from that hell and that was enough for him.
Somewhere in Attica.
Reece woke to the sound of knocking on his door. In the bleary moment between sleep and full wakefulness all that passed through his mind was that he would kill whoever was making that ruckus.
Then he remembered what day it was, and what had transpired the day before. Which brightened him up. After all, he thought "Not every day the damned spics and heelies and fucking commie cucks come to you" Reece had been trying to get them to see. That they had to kill the cultural marxists as soon as possible or else the helots or heelies as he liked to call them, were just going to keep rebelling. "That fucking coward Dixon doesn't want to hear it, damn him". Still, it was of no matter, by now he'd get what he wanted, soon the Jews would be dead and the Heelies would know their place.
Reece rose and paid little to no attention to the bleeding broken, naked form on the floor, she'd live or die and it mattered not a whit to him at this point.
The knocking became more insistent.
"Reece, open the fuck up"
It was that bitch Emery, then.
"Fuck you want?" He asked.
"Morrison wants us to leave in a half hour, If you don't wanna be left behind you'd better get your ass in gear!"
"Fucking fine, just get off my ass will you!"
Reece heard Emery trudge away through the all too thin walls of the little hut he'd commandeered the previous day.
Emery:Attica, Just before battle
Something about this whole situation stunk to Emery. From the very first moment when that man, Ethans, she thought his name was, had stumbled into the palace ranting about an invasion from the isthmus of corinth. The man was half dead by the time he came in, and had a nasty infection. At first no one had really been taking him seriously, they'd done some of their due diligence and had dispatched some chariots to the border post he'd said had been attacked.
At first they'd thought the man had been exaggerating, perhaps to make himself look good, far less embarrassing to lose to an overwhelming force, after all. Besides, New Arizona was barely holding together under the combined strain of famine and smallpox, so how in the hell were the commies supposed to attack them when they had to be suffering the same, if not worse?
But somehow they had, and what an attack it was, Emery thought as she watched the enemy advance through the optics on her rifle. Lines of men wearing either red or green, mottled jackets advanced. Every one of them carrying a gun of some kind, Emery had thought Arizona had been advancing quickly, evidently she'd been wrong.
Most worrying of all were the big guns they had in the back though.
After all, even if the Myceneans had somehow managed to make enough guns to arm what had to be thousands of men, she doubted they had the range and quality of downtime firearms. But Emery had also doubted that such an invasion could be mounted in the first place, so what did she know?
The Arizonans fired first, dozens and then hundreds firing to less than expected effect. Emery knew many of them had had little to no training in months on account of the perennial shortages of uptime ammo. She looked up from her scope at the squad she was supposed to be leading, none of them were police material, she knew. Much less military, besides their officers but Emery couldn't help but feel like she'd been saddled with the dreck anyways. All of them had stopped firing once they'd seen the limited effect they were having, except for Reece of course. Of all the bottom of the barrel shit she'd been saddled with that man was by far the worst.
Emery walked up to him.
"Stop firing!" She repeated herself to no effect.
When the idiot was finally done wasting ammo she bent down and tore his gun from his hands, being former police and with Reece surprised it was easy enough.
The man looked at her shocked. At that moment Emery decided the man was too much of a liability to be kept with her squad.
"Away with you!"
He looked at her dumbly
"you fucking deaf?"
Emery pointed her gun at him.
"I told you to fuck off"
Reece went.
Getting back into line with the rest of her squad, Emery inspected the battlefield again. Little enough had changed, some of the enemy redcoats had gone down and were being pulled away by their buddies but their advance didn't seem to have slowed in the slightest. Save for their cannons, those had stopped. she noticed that they were doing…something. There was a moment of incomprehension for Emery, that moment just before realization was when the cannons fired. Not all at once. Some of the crews were down, she noticed. But some of more than a hundred cannons were still quite a few.
Perhaps it was merely Emery's imagination but at that moment she felt time slow as the shot descended towards them. Then it hit. Most slammed into the ridge to little effect, throwing up gouts of sand and rock, or burst on impact leaving behind splatters of something flammable. Yet others rolled or bounced and she could hear bones snap like twigs. A select few slammed into their targets, including one filled with that fiery substance. The poor bastards it hit started burning and she was close enough to smell it. The smell of burning hair largely overwhelmed everything else but beneath it… Emery struggled not to puke.
At that moment shock rippled through their ranks. On some level this whole formation was unused to taking casualties. Despite quelling slave revolts often and in gruesome fashion most of the troops here were totally unused to actually sustaining casualties themselves. Then the officers did their jobs corralling the men and designating targets mostly by screaming at them to target the cannons and the moment passed. Orders were sent out to ones in charge of the thralls and they too began advancing towards the enemy.
The battle went by quickly after that though it also somehow felt like an eternity, whenever the cannons were busy reloading some of their troops, the ones with the best firearms or aim took potshots at their crews while the rest poked their heads out to fire at the advancing redcoats.
Eventually the enemy artillery got into the pattern of always having at least one gun firing at any given time, trying to keep their heads down.
It felt like the battle went on like that for years to Emery, until very suddenly it changed. The thrall soldiers, having been hit with grapeshot and charged by soldiers better armed and in better spirits than they had broken and routed.
Emery cursed the cowards and in a moment of spiteful pique squeezed off a shot towards one of them, he fell she noted with some satisfaction and then refocused on the advancing redcoats.
They could hardly have been more than a hundred meters away by now. As soon as Emery poked her head out and took a shot, felling one of them the others took aim, and she was forced to take cover.
Emery only managed to relocate and fire twice more and then they were on them. A ruddy faced youth, small for his age like all downtimers jumped over the ridge and landed right in front of her. Quickly Emery took aim and pulled the trigger, only for her gun to make a sad click "empty" Emery realized and before the youth could get his bearings, charged. Pulling her knife from its sheath, hoping the enemy's gun was empty she showed his bayonet aside with her empty rifle, grabbing at the end of his gun just behind the bayonet she pushed it up, wrenching it away from him. He stumbled back, unsure what to do without his gun, lunging, Emery made a faint towards his side, only to pull the knife up at the last moment and bury it in the side of his throat.
She did not have time to celebrate her victory, she heard a sharp crack and pain cut through her abdomen, just barely managing to turn before she fell, to face her enemy she saw another young man, face twisted with rage and grief. Lying on the ground and slowly losing consciousness with a gaping hole where her kidney should be, the last thing that went through Emery's mind was a quarter meter of Mycenaean steel.
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