Amelia, Ch 316- Calvert
"Commander James," I opened, giving the woman a cursory examination. She was one of the best, and driven to eliminate the 'one of' part. My second in command ever since Miss Militia left. She lacked her predacessor's empathy and ability to improvise, which held her back. In many ways, she reminded me of Emily. Pity, that, it meant she was a good commander, but a poor leader at best. She'd likely be promoted to Director status in five years or less. I resolved to treat her well during that time, and see to it that I learned her well enough to properly harness her once she got her promotion.
"Yes, Director?" She responded, training her focus on me.
"We're being called into action," I informed her. "All of my team, as well as every other soldier authorized to use the SM7 models. It seems the new Endbringer is a 'master' class power set."
"Like the Simurgh?"
"Closer to Nilbog," I answered. She tensed. She had performed less than admirably during that engagement, taking considerable damage to her equipment almost immediately. It wasn't, strictly speaking, her fault. It could have been any set of armor, it could have been any member of the team. Except myself, of course. Poor luck and being a half second too slow on the response were her only faults, and I wasn't certain of the latter. But she had a chip on her shoulder even before then, and I was not adverse to using it. "There will be a series of larger monsters, which we are leaving to the parahumans and Pantheon's weapons. We will contend with humanoid monsters, numbering in the hundreds of thousands."
"I understand," she responded, her jaw set hard. I split the timeline
"There's a teleporter collecting men and matériel from across the country," I informed her next. "We have five minutes to be at the ready. Prepare the men while I attend to some last minute concerns."
"Yes, sir."
//
"You'll be in command of my team, I'll handle organizing the other teams, get yourself equipped," I instructed.
"Yes, sir."
This was the timeline for me to keep, of course, but I needed the chance to study the resources I had at my disposal. Many of the team leaders I would be working with, I'd only met a few times. Operating the EB versions of the M7s was rare, requiring authorization from the President herself, which left me precious little time to develop a more personal relationship with those men and women who'd be leading these teams. I would reacquaint myself with my prior notes and Minerva's psych evals on each of them while speaking to them via this timeline.
....
This is the first time I've ever actually seen Avalon, I realized. I stepped out of their mass 'shunt' device, fighting my nausea. I was proud to note that, while a couple soldiers lost their stomachs, none of them were part of my team. The blue green ground removed the physical signs of their weakness quickly, in an act slightly reminiscent of Nilbog's 'recycling' of matter. The place was uniform, orderly. A few small homes existed nearby, within visual range on the mostly flat fields.
"Okay, this is going to take a minute," Janus informed us. One of the few Pantheon members old enough to legally buy alcohol. That mere children ruled their own world was abs-olutely no surprise, given their powers and ambitions. At least they were smart enough to defer to more experienced individuals like Dragon and Accord when it came to management of their nation. "Please take the time to organize yourselves."
I gave the orders I needed, separating my men into squad control of the other teams. I knew them and trusted them to do the job correctly. James was given primary command of my newer men, the ones not yet trained well enough to be leaders in their own right. Those I trusted best were put in as seconds for the various other squad leaders across the country. In the two minutes it took Janus and his Thanda friend to prepare, a thousand men had been organized and assigned a M7EB of one description or another. They were eager to go, to prove themselves.
It's easy to be brave when you know you can't be touched. Isn't that what that Atropos girl had said during her interview? I couldn't help but wonder how these men and women would hold up if they had to go into this fight with their lives actually on the line.
"We're ready," Janus announced.
"As are we," I confirmed. He took that as enough of a command, and the world shifted around us. Instead of an empty field surrounded by a few hovels made of plant, we were now surrounded by Dragon armors and a number of parahumans. I spotted the makeshift hospital to the side, full of gravely injured capes. Each one missing at least one limb. I recognized Chevalier amongst the wounded. Gaea and a handful of others were moving through, caring for them.
What kind of weapon was this Endbringer using?
"It has capabilities to infect and control organic tissue," Minerva informed, answering the question before I had the chance to ask it. That imper-impatient, given the circumstances of the battle and our need to hurry it, it was a necessary shortcut. "The special M7 models should be immune, in much the same way Avalon's disposable troops are proving immune. Don't let that fool you, however. These things hit hard, they can destroy your equipment the old fashioned way."
"Understood," I nodded.
"We have two planned tactics at the moment," she continued. She wants me to use my power. It should be m- she knows what she's doing. I divided the path. It would be a while before that mattered, but there was no sense in not starting early. I could always collapse one of them later. "The first would be to deploy your men as cleanup. We know there won't be any new Endspawn in this fight."
"How can you know that?" Dragon asked via a nearby armored suit.
"Look at the number that we've counted thus far," Minerva responded.
"Six hundred and si- oh, I see what you mean," Dragon agreed.
"The problem is now there are no less than four hundred thousand infected in the city, possibly twice that, and we're running out of the resources needed to fight them," she continued. "Most of us are exhausted. This has been the longest Endbringer battle save for Khonsu, and it is starting to show. One option is to deploy your soldiers into the battlefield to run cleanup operations. Going door to door and killing everything."
Given this is on a city wide scale it could take hours, even days, to accomplish.
"The second," she continued. "Is to have your men reinforce the barriers, and deploy our last resort weapon. There's some significant risk to the plan."
<There is no risk,> a dark skinned woman in tattered clothes responded. <My shadow can handle this easily. They will all die with trivial ease, you shall see.>
"Yes, Moord Nag, I know," Minerva nodded. "But once we assault their strong points, we risk them making a coordinated break for it. All of them together. They've gotten smart enough to start coordinating. Using weapons. And their mutations are getting stronger as well."
<It does not matter,> Moord Nag spoke. <Let them hide, let them flee, let them fight. They will die all the same.>
Minerva rubbed her eyes.
She's wea-ry. This has been a long battle, no one can be expected to remain at their best. I glanced over at the others.
These are mere children. Children with power, granted, but children. How did I ever believe that commanding kids as they tried to play cops and robbers was a good idea? No, it was so much better now, commanding armies of grown men and women. <It's not her failing I fear, it's what she might do after she succeeds,> Tattletale spoke in...
Finnish? This translation tech is remarkably thorough.
"We'll take the lead," I agreed.
<Glory obsessed fool,> Moord Nag accused. I ignored her.
//
"Let's see if she's as good as she believes she is," I suggested. "We'll reinforce the perimeter and deal with stragglers."
<At least, a voice of reason,> Moord Nag nodded. <Hurry your men.> She turned toward Lisa and held out a hand. <Give.> she commanded as a black shadow roiled around her, forming from nowhere. It wore the skull of some sort of large fish or shark.
....
I frowned. Damn it. The infected were deceptively dangerous. Faster than the suits, able to hide from their senses, and fighting with ambush tactics. No wonder Avalon's shock troops were so effective.
"They're in the sewers!" one of my men shouted. I watched his suit blip black.
We're losing this.
"Perimeter breached, Z14," Dragon announced. "Perimeter breached, R9. Infected located in Versailles."
I looked over at Minerva. She wanted to know how bad the other timeline was, if we'd be forced to keep this one. She didn't need to ask, she could see it on my face.
//
We had a different sort of problem in this line. Moord Nag stood in the middle of the city, a city coated in black death. Her shadow, fattened on power from the literal hundreds of thousands that she had slain, roiled across the streets. It hammered the wall hard enough to topped a section in one blow, then it sprayed out into the area just outside Paris. Thousands more lives were claimed in seconds.
"Perimeter breached M21," Dragon's tech announced. "Moord Nag's shadow is spreading rapidly toward Créteil."
================
A/N- Ah, when situations are desperate enough to feed half a million people to Moord Nag. Five thousand was enough for her to approach Alexandria's strength. What's a hundred times that worth?
Also: I've been wanting to do a good Coil interlude for a while, now. Sorry it took so long to find a good opportunity to make it happen.
