"Oh, sir, the Blessed personnel dispatched to the eastern defenses completed their work."
The Prime Beacon allowed himself a faint smile upon hearing Four. "That's something. Have them retreat then; we don't want them in any more danger than necessary. Their presence isn't needed anymore."
He regretted his words immediately. Wasn't that the kind of thinking he'd condemned in his generals? It made sense—conserving limited manpower—but it also made him feel less human. He compartmentalized the feeling for now. "How's He-6?"
"Same as ever. Enjoying himself a bit too much, but nothing out of the ordinary."
The man in question was chuckling under his breath--or the supersized equivalent of doing it, blowing new holes through the Aud ranks. His abnormal stature made any attempt at quietness impossible, the gusts of wind knocking more Aud free. His aide sighed and hailed him. "Sir, you've disabled fourteen exterior-mounted surface modules and emplacements."
Humanity once said a person couldn't make an omelet without cracking some eggs. Whatever an egg and an omelet were. He-6 kept a cringe off his face. The Prime Beacon's weird and archaic phrases had no place among his thoughts!
"You can't make progress without sacrifice," He-6 replied. "Besides, I can always blame the Aud in the after-action reports. Technically, they're the ones causing it. It's their fault I aimed there. Their fault I'm this big, too."
She tactfully avoided an argument about his "innocence" and directed the Jackal to swipe in a wide arc while the NDS fired. It left a small scratch in the wall—"small" being relative—and a greater impact on the Aud. Hundreds of whites were reduced to red mist, oranges and yellows flattened, and greens dragged along the wall. Even they couldn't avoid the internal injuries from the force. The friction burns must've stung, if the Aud still felt pain.
The techs couldn't figure out what had changed, regarding that. Were their nerves dulled, or just not receiving signals? Had they been ordered to ignore pain? He-6's aide shivered, unable to imagine being forced into the latter scenario.
As the Jackal prepared for another swipe, she pinched the bridge of her nose. More emplacements were being destroyed. No matter how much the Aud were pushed back, they adapted quickly, moving around the Jackal's swings like water.
The Jackal was like a child slapping a bowl of water—some was knocked out, but most just flowed around the hand. Their advance was faster than He-6 and the Jackal could handle.
The physical swipes, emplacements, NDS, and He-6's sonic attacks were losing effectiveness. With each new meter conquered, the Aud destroyed dozens of emplacements, lowering the firepower mounted against them.
"Sir, the vanguard isn't being whittled down fast enough. Is it—"
"I know!" For the first time, concern tinged He-6's voice. He watched the distance between them and the Aud close rapidly. His mind raced, considering everything from standard protocol to desperate, radical plans. He put in a request for Blessed personnel to reinforce them, but he knew they might not arrive in time.
And he wasn't worried for himself or the Jackal. Both could survive the initial waves. He, with his size preventing the Aud from reaching anything life-threatening, and the Jackal, fast enough to disengage and avoid any internal intrusions.
He could use his body as an additional barrier, lying over the edge of the wall horizontally. It would hurt like nothing before and be the hardest core exercise of his life, but once the battle ended and he shrank back to normal, a few rounds of liquid sun would ensure survival. Or he could—
"The Jackal's scanners detected a spike in mid-tiers, sir! A few—no, wait—dozens!" His aide broke off, and the silence made her disbelief clear. "Dozens of greens!"
"You don't say. Greens?"
"Yes, all of them."
"Call for priority in the spotlight network's queue. Those Blessed are going to be necessary soon if we want to hold this stretch against the Aud." Packs of greens were racing through their fellow Aud, zipping across the wall and clearing a path toward the only two targets worth focusing on. "Tell them to hurry, or we might lose the Jackal."
He-6 noticed a few things. Though his eyesight wasn't great, his height—combined with sensor data from the Jackal and the walls feeding into his HUD—helped him piece together clues.
One: the greens were headed their way. Not surprising, except their movements were clearly guided by the Aud intelligence. They remained cohesive and together. And that was the surprising part. Why had the supposed Aud commander chosen to focus attention here? If it wanted to test the Jackal's signature systems, it already had plenty of data—Aud that had suffered under the NDS's delivery systems.
Two: the white-furs and stragglers in the vanguard were actively contributing to the greens' ascent, stepping aside rather than becoming obstacles. The greens were strong enough to tear through them, but the clear paths suggested urgency. Maybe they were on a time limit, had a window of opportunity they needed to meet, or maybe the Aud intelligence was more impatient than expected.
Three: the greens were taking the path of least resistance. Despite the chaos from flying projectiles, trajectory and scan data revealed their movement patterns. The Aud typically ignored damage, reacting only on an animal level, rarely out of self-preservation. After the newest commands or directions from the Aud intellect, they stopped even that behavioral pattern.
But these greens were still deliberately avoiding harm. He-6 had a theory why. Pain in the Aud came from injuries, and injuries reduced performance. The intelligence wanted these greens in peak condition for whatever task awaited them.
He-6 wasn't the only one drawing conclusions. The Prime Beacon studied the same data when he got his hands on it. He wasn't far behind He-6 in realizing the Aud were targeting the only present carrier of the Old Man's Blessing.
Maybe they wanted to remove a carrier of the Old Man's Blessing early on in the siege. Or use He-6 as a standard of what to expect for the other Blessed? The Prime Beacon smiled—He-6 was an imperfect benchmark for the Aud. Carriers with combat-oriented Vigors, or any kind, were like colors, with no pair being alike.
Then, his grin faded. Now that it had come to this point, he didn't want He-6 to die today. He rapped the officer's chair, causing the officer to look up. "Dispatch twenty carriers of the Old Man's Blessing to the Jackal's southern stretch."
"Yes, sir." The request hadn't yet reached Directory Control, but the Prime Beacon could anticipate it. If He-6 and his aide had common sense, that was what they'd do; they couldn't hold off both the main Aud armies and the greens with only the Jackal and He-6's body.
He issued more orders to support the Jackal's defenses. He clasped his hands, wondering how high the cost of the new intel, both observed and inferred, would be. Hopefully, He-6 wouldn't make any more reckless choices. His knee tingled.
He-6 watched the greens climb. As he swiped again, creating bloody smears across the wall, he made the last realization. Four: The greens were aiming for him, not the Jackal. The earlier details and the strangely lax response from Directory Control concerning his unapproved field deployment all clicked.
He laughed as it did. He was the bait! He couldn't be ordered to retreat if his role was to draw the Aud intelligence's interest. He was the knot in an unspoken trial agreement between the Aud and military leadership. Both wanted information, and he was what they'd bet on. Who would benefit more?
"You magnificent scoundrel!" He laughed again, stronger winds blasting the whites. That Prime Beacon! "Ah!" He knew what he had to do. Even if reinforcements didn't arrive soon, the Jackal would survive. Most of the remaining Aud were whites, too weak to break through its scutumsteel plating. The greens, though—they would be a problem. But he could delay that specific problem.
He stood to salute the Jackal and stepped off the edge.