The Battle (19 page)

"Both sides respawned, obviously, but some equipment got stolen. You can tell if you compare losses – our guys looted more. Plus, the Chinese lost speed, buffs, and morale. The Reenactors got chased up to the walls. Tianlong even opened its jaws for them, X-raying their brains. It rejected two dozen for some reason, and allowed the rest to climb the walls. You shoulda seen their archers! They shit on algorithms! They
know
that their bows have a 600-foot range, and they don't give a fuck about the 30-pace program limit! I heard that this ain’t even half their miracles: that even magic is weak in their cities! They’re breeding their own anomalies, would you believe?!"

"Sure is an interesting experiment. And what are the Chinese up to?"

"Organizing a siege machinery yard while sustaining small yet galling damage from the archers. They’re also setting up camp for about 50,000 people. That’s why the lightsters are unhappy. The Chinese got the stage all to themselves, leaving the latecomers with only minor roles. Of course the latter are pissed off!"

I scratched my brow pensively. "Hm, what if we take advantage of it and get them fighting each other? Send word to Flint: he’ll get the Light Bearers attacking the Fallen One’s evil followers, thus provoking a conflict between the Chinese and the Lights. That will be the end of their friendship!"

Lazar nodded in agreement. "That’s right, cleave and conquer. I have a few ideas myself. After chatting with the Maoist ambassador, I got a better understanding of what the clans could do, and the big picture is quite amusing. But clearly this is no place to talk secrets. Shall we go inside?"

"Fine. When my senior officers get here, we’ll jump in and freeze time. There isn’t much of it anyway."

His eyes flashed for a moment.

So, he’s heard of the Crypt?
I presumed.
As they say, what’s done by night appears by day
.

Durin came first with a green crate in his hands, carefully stepping on the marble tiles. Eyeing us suspiciously, he put his load on the ground.

"Here... As you ordered..."

"Thanks," I said as I bent down, unlatched the lid and opened the crate.

Inside, on top of a cushion of fine black sand, sat thirty grenades of different shapes and colors.

I picked out a heavier ribbed one and handed it to the Analyst. "Here! Pin it to your boxers and never take it off even when you have sex! In case of trouble like today, you know what to do – pull the ring, let go of the tab and drop the thing on the floor. Minus 8,000 HP given medium-grade armor. Enough to take you out."

Durin shuddered. He was the one we had tested it out on. The grenades all had different markings – which grenade did what and how much each one hurt could not have been determined without experimenting first.

Orcus’s greedy mitt appeared from behind my back as he silently approached us, "I’ll take that one, the orange one!"

Greeting him, I handed him the fancy toy, "Why orange? You gonna give us colored smoke signals in case of an attack? This grenade’s a smoke pot – fun but useless. Take one with red or yellow-red markings. As far as I can tell, these are identical to defensive and frag grenades. The rest are useless fireworks given our situation: flashbang, EM, tear gas and signal. Durin knows."

The dwarf backed up, while Lazar stepped forward with a serious look, "Max, in the name of the Company, I ask that you give us one each to study."

I shrugged: something you don't want is dear at any price. I picked out all the colorful tinsel and handed it to the GRU agent.

He stuffed the goodies into his bottomless bag, then pointed to the crate again, "And these too, the red ones."

Durin and Orcus growled in unison. Exchanging glances, they instantly formed a temporary alliance and stepped forward, shielding the clan’s riches from the insolent freeloader.

I laughed. "Orcus! I don’t remember biting you. Where did you catch the greedy pig?"

He smiled. "In smart books. If you wanna succeed, find someone successful in your field of interest and do what he did. Your pig is legendary, and I want one too!"

"All right, men, quit nursing your greed. We’re on the same team. Take one, Sir Eloquent..."

Orcus attached a gizmo to his belt and whirled around, enjoying the forgotten weight of hand-held artillery. "A gun wouldn’t hurt..." he threw me a pleading, doleful look.

I couldn’t help with that. A dozen worn out guns stood in the clan’s armory. A few more had been stolen by thrifty clanmates who naively assumed that the leader wouldn’t find out. Durin himself could be found every night licking clean a stolen machine gun, polishing it and oiling the rough mechanism.

And although the interface persistently dubbed the weapons as "mithril ore" chunks, I felt that there was some chance of restoring them to an operable condition. Plus, there was a second problem – over the centuries, the gunpowder had turned into gray dust, incapable of igniting.

The alchemists had a secret race to create quick-burning solutions. Gimmick was playing stupid and swore that he couldn’t recall the explosive potion recipe. Even Durin’s mossy jacket had a few distinctive scorched spots. But still, no progress.

After picking out the grenades, we all jumped into the Crypt. It was still overcrowded, with its own unique atmosphere of a unisex barracks.

I wouldn’t mind hanging out there for a month myself. A soldier with a carefree life. Feast, drink, make out and joke around.

The on-duty officer reported that another Station had been taken. I was glad to hear it. Station 7 was filled with platinum coins and fighter droids – useless at the moment, but still.

Once we closed the heavy curtains of the officer space behind us, Lazar once again made his point,

"Max! I understand I am being intrusive, but I ask that you let five of our specialists into the Crypt. The Company desperately needs its own warriors."

I tensed up. To give up one station meant slowing the clan’s leveling up by twenty percent. That was a lot.

"The Crypt won’t help level up noobs," I tested the waters. "You need a well-coordinated group of level 150-plus, with top gear."

"We have that!" Lazar nodded with confidence.

Widowmaker grew indignant. "When you need someone to fight, there’s no one. But once free leveling up is in question, a whole crowd of volunteers suddenly pops up!"

Ignoring him, Lazar met my gaze and continued his persuasion, "Max, you said it yourself: we’re on the same team! It’s not for me or the Company. Tell me, does the word
motherland
still mean anything to you? Or did it atrophy completely under all the liberal propaganda?"

The Analyst frowned displeasedly while Orcus froze and stared into my face. My answer was important to the former colonel. Very important.

I closed my eyes for a moment and said to myself,
Motherland
...

I rolled the word around on my tongue like some aged expensive cognac, felt the sensation. It did not evoke discomfort or shame. I did not long to awkwardly avert my gaze, and I was not at all embarrassed.

And I liked the things my mind associated with the word: the world’s most gorgeous Slavic girls, the smell of early morning autumn cold, the flowery meadows with birds chirping, the well-attended ancestral graves, the steel-hard foreign policy, and the armor of its tank armies. It was all mine, my very own.

I opened my eyes. "Fine, but your guys will need to be deeply undercover..."

Lazar gave a sigh of relief. He wasn’t alone.

"Thanks, Max. Excuse the platitude, but the Motherland is grateful. As for going undercover – can you accept them into the clan? Temporarily, of course."

I beat the Analyst to the reply and said with a frown, "I don’t need someone else’s subordinates! Anyone who joins the clan shall abide by this clan’s current chain of command only. The Children of the Night have but one leader."

The Grumbler nodded understandingly. "Yessir, no complaints. The deserving retirees of the Company have seen life. They know discipline better than us. They will obey you and no one else. Should they need to take outside orders, they will leave the clan or ask your permission."

I barely held back from a suspicious "hm."
Sure they will,
I thought,
just like that.
Whether I wanted it or not, there was no such thing as a "former Grumbler." They would always remain the products of the Company.

But this wasn’t my primary concern. Surviving till Monday was.

"Agreed. Now, back to the problems at hand. What ideas did you say you came up with?"

Lazar smiled. "Ones you could expect from someone like me. But first tell me, how many Astral Mana Absorption scrolls do you have?"

I took the massive binder out of my inventory, flipped to the relevant section and pulled ten pages out. "There you go," I said.

Nobody needed to know about the spare set I had stashed away for a rainy day.

The Grumbler started setting precious Reset Potions on the table like a show magician. Three... Five... Ten... Twelve!

I drooled at the sight of them. In addition to its mighty useful spell and ability counter reset effect, the potion also boasted the delicious flavor of custard with orange juice.

"Make that twenty-two AMA scrolls total."

I nodded in agreement. We could also pump out a whole stack of Portals to Inferno. An exceedingly topical problem in these times.

Orcus carefully picked up a vial and looked at the magic light within. "What are we to do with them?"

Lazar got up as if to make a mission briefing. "Out of all the issues we must deal with, I took the Chinese upon myself. Simply put, our goals are as follows: help the good guys, chase away and punish the bad ones, and scare the shit outta the rest. We don’t have many forces to spare. Our physical resources are quite limited, but we still have a few trump cards. And we are gonna play them!"

The Grumbler paused as he waited for the pretty rosy-cheeked waitress to pass out the drinks and leave.

I shook my fist at Widowmaker, who could not hold back and allowed himself the liberty of touching the girl.
Focus, playboy!

Lazar eyed the long, heavy curtains skeptically, then went on, lowering his voice, "All of the Revanchists’ main forces – their elite – are here now. They laid siege to our castles. They hang by Tianlong, attack independent farms and mansions. About fifteen thousand more are systematically strangling our Maoist allies and their partners. They’ve lost over a third of their base stations at this point. The rest are under siege, about to give up."

I nodded; he was right. The Mao’s Legacy boys were cut off from their main mobilized resource – the Mercs. Shui Fong had made an official, weighty announcement – anyone who joined the Crafter Alliance would make the clan’s KOS-list, including in the real world. This made the number of volunteers shrink significantly.

Now the workers were well-off, but with a pretty lame fighting force. Napoleon was right: those who do not wish to feed their own army will soon be feeding someone else’s.

The Maoists still stood. Mostly thanks to their allies, who no doubt had already cursed the day they joined the shady Russians. We had made a good impression at first, having schooled the big boss in the hood, but ran off quicker than we’d appeared.

Lazar suggested, "Given all this, here is my plan: come X-Hour, we take down the dome shields on all twenty-two Revanchist castles, thus allowing Mao’s Legacy warriors to seize and destroy the defenseless citadels. They will get a third of their assets along with transportable possessions, and the enemy Alliance will be significantly weaker."

My greedy pig reared up in indignation, feeling for a sword with which to strike down this plunderer and defend what could potentially be ours.

The Grumbler, unaware of this threat, continued with enthusiasm, "Having lost half their properties, the invasion army will be forced to return to its cluster where all the local jackals will jump on the wounded lion. The fight for locations that lack castle protection will be huge!"

The Analyst joined in, "Are the allies strong enough? Storming twenty castles at once is not the same as sitting under a dome’s protection!"

"They should be strong enough. Six thousand Maoists is a light snack for seventy thousand Revanchists. But! This is obviously enough for allotting three hundred warriors for the occupation of each citadel. The Chinese went all out. Their familial houses have given their best in the hope of getting a Dome Shield and mobile reinforcements."

I summarized the situation out loud, "We have taken overpopulated castles with three hundred before, no issues there. I even believe that the allies can reach the Control Room and retrieve the property. But there’s no chance of keeping it. I mean none."

Lazar shrugged. "That’s what I suggested, and the Chinese agreed – to destroy with a rollback of one third of the price."

I looked him straight in the eye. "And then what?"

"The Revanchists go home, we occupy the tight castle quarters and split the scanty inheritance. We will disintegrate their alliance in time. If we attack the right targets, they will lose up to eighty percent of their productive and economical capacity, along with their reserves and all the key control points. It’s a mortal wound the alliance won’t recover from."