When Atilonia’s Second Fleet passed through the King’s Strait, the four-mile wide channel through Bastilhas’ barrier mountains, they did so unopposed. The many fortresses that lined the cliffs were silent, their naval guns long since seized by their army. The Atilonians then entered the dark water surrounding Vultheras, colloquially known as the Brass Sea, and found it was empty. There were no battleships; no cruisers to challenge them; not even shipping freighters, or the humble fishing trawler.
It was the king of Bastilhas, Kalen Darigon, that ordered his navy to abandon the Brass Sea and take shelter in neighboring Edwindy. There they could support the Edwindians for the remainder of the Zenith War, and further avoid capture by the Atilonians who would no doubt enjoy dissecting their advanced automaton-assisted weapons systems.
At the same time, those with boats or the coin to buy passage fled the city, before Atilonia closed the King’s Strait by capture of Bastilhas’ coastal forts. Whatever ships remained, those unfit for the open ocean or in disrepair, were left moored to the docks of Vultheras, behind its impenetrable dome barrier.
And so, on the 62nd day of the siege, the Brass Sea was dominated by the sixty-two ships of the Second Fleet. Their concentration of twelve battleships was the highest in the Atilonian Navy, and furthermore it was flagged by the newly-commissioned Empress Atheria, the thousand-foot battleship that dwarfed all ships in her designation. Her broadside of six turrets, each a complete four-gun battery, could fire twenty-four shells a minute and turn anything into a smoldering crater.
Admiral Giovanni, the Admiral of the Fleet and head of Atilonia’s Naval Command, was aboard the Empress Atheria. From her modern citadel, his officers used long-range radios to convey the admiral’s instructions and position the fleet parallel to the Vultheras’ shield. By the eleventh bell, the battleships and heavy cruisers had formed their semi-circle around the city; trained their broadsides on its invisible ley line junctions.
The Second Fleet’s freighters and boarding craft were positioned behind the battleships, and the small destroyers were spread in a loose formation between Vultheras and the capital ship battle line. Admiral Giovanni treated them as chaff and intended they confuse and distract in the event of retaliation.
The army, meanwhile, had completed its own preparations. Along the rocky coast, in the hills just above the water, were their 4 Inch Medium Guns. Although considerably smaller than the navy’s battleship-class cannons, they were no less dangerous when organized in batteries of ten. The isolated artillery crews listened to their radios and updated their targeting telemetry based on the Army Weather Service’s latest forecast. Last night’s rain was the first band of a major storm system moving south east across the mountains. They had to anticipate high wind and limited-visibility conditions.
Down in the town of Wenderguard, six columns of sixteen AF-Mizara tanks idled at the bridge. Veritably called the Wendergerd Bridge, the Central Bridge, or the Darigon Bridge; the five-mile long transit between the coast and the island fortress-city was considered one of the nine wonders of the world. It was made of high-tensile strength steel, not iron or bronze, and suspended by cables of expensive—rare—mithril. On clear summer days, the polished cables would sparkle in the afternoon sunlight, as bright and lustrous as gold.
It would be impossible to replace the bridge if it were destroyed; hard, even, to repair the smallest hole in its structure. It was the Royal Steel Foundry of Baru that first supplied material for the bridge, and with their destruction, no foundry in the world could match the fantastic quality the bridge required.
So far as mithril was concerned, it was widely known that the mithril dungeon of Adheim had run dry and the mines throughout the barrier mountains themselves threatened closure. Bastilhas’ golden age, when wonderous bridges and towers were built to exalt knowledge and power, had passed long ago.
That dazzling crossing looked dreary beneath the clouds. Pilots sat on and around their tanks, leather gunner’s coifs wrapped tightly around their heads as they ate their lunch. The engines were left running so as to stay warm in the cold; that it was expensive and burned an obscene amount of fuel wasn’t a concern. Second General Stefano’s directive was clear: Capture Vultheras before the Navy. It wouldn’t do if the shield collapsed and the crews were left in the lurch, waiting for the tanks to start.
Behind the tank columns were rows of trucks loaded with infantry. Each truck carried a platoon of ten, which was composed of two squads of five. Their standard loadout was a bolt-action rifle for each rifleman, and an early-production automatic pistol for the sergeants. There was also enough food and ammunition to support three days of fighting, provided they couldn’t return to base.
While an ordinary regiment was lightly armed, every fifth platoon contained two heavy weapons squads equipped with modern machineguns that were otherwise only found on vehicles. They were heavy and prone to overheating, but from a bipod the machineguns could lay down annihilating fields of fire that even the magical feared.
Those magical beings, adventurers, or magic-blessed soldiers, could prove difficult obstacles for mana-void soldiers. To deal with those extreme threats, the first platoon of each company was assigned an inquisitor, ordained by the High Bishopric of Achlesial to wield anti-magical weapons. Frequently, those inquisitors also ensured compliance with Atilonia’s anti-magical laws, sometimes against either their own soldiers, or even civilians, wherever they found them.
The first assault, behind the tanks that were the army’s spearpoint, consisted of thirty-two thousand soldiers. It was a large, intimidating number, but as impressive were the sophisticated logistics behind it. The assault force was composed of thirty-two regiments, themselves consisting of ten companies each. There were 3,200 platoons and 6,400 individual squads in Wenderguard. 320 Inquisitors were deployed throughout to oversee them, along with a support staff consisting of mechanics, non-combat medical personnel, and catering as necessary. The ammunition stockpiled for the assault was enough to put a bullet in each Bastilhasian head a thousand times over.
The tank crews, deep in their lunches, heard a buzz apart from the rumble of their machines. They turned their heads up and, over the metropolitan streets of Wenderguard, they spotted passing aircraft. Wrathful Thunder, a plan two months in the making, included the Army and the Navy, and as the crews saw, then the Air Legion as well.
They were a young branch of the military, formed in the last hundred years in response to Edwindy’s combined air-navy of flying battleships. Although Atilonia flew modern fix-winged aircraft, they were little more than Edwindian copies, and with regard to Edwindy, their aerial tactics were archaic. Atilonians saw aircraft as useful only in support for ground or naval forces, but not as a branch that could claim victory under their own power.
To support that paradigm, the Antoni Ai.221’s under the command of colonel Valentina were outfitted with single, thousand pound—one-and-done—bomb payloads. In the event of air interception, they were also loaded with enough ammunition for up to nine seconds of firing from their twin machineguns. When a target was identified, be it by radio or flare, the pilots would turn into a steep dive, and deliver their payload with precision accuracy.
That they were highly effective at destroying targets earned them no esteem among army and naval officers. Nonetheless the crews and soldiers below were happy to see the planes, soaring just below the thick clouds in Vic formation. They whistled and pointed, and had smiles on their faces, for Atilonia commanded the land, the sea, and the sky. What could stop them?
