Tragedy: Act Four, Scene Six
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Act Four, Scene Six
June 20th 2013, 7:59 PM
Jacket kept on driving while Junia’s flesh and bone knitted themselves back together, and then finally his car showed up at the gate to her district and Junia threw herself out of the car with a “Thanks!” and kept going, leaping and manifesting grappling hooks and spiked boots to help her run straight up to the towers at the top of the wall -
- That had always bugged her about her mother, way back when. The other counts all had the feudal show, the feudal titles, but Livia, who was the commander of an army and wore a military uniform, was the only one who’d built a castle wall around her district -
And waved hello to the guard there.
He saluted.
“Hello, Private! What have you heard about the fight at the square?”
“Nothing, Ma’am!”
“Livia’s gone, I’m in charge, and there’s a very good chance that people are going to be showing up to kill you soon. Radio for backup, go on high alert, and I’m going to take your backup radio and run to the palace now.”
“Ma’am!”
It was insulting, was what it was, the way he just did what she said. He didn’t even question her orders. She could’ve just walked in and taken over any time, and that was no way for an army to work. They hadn’t even asked whether she had any authority, just because they recognized her. She was an enemy of the state! A well-known enemy of the state!
Right up there was her mother’s square palace, that horrible place where she’d been taught the use of every weapon except the ones she wanted to learn how to use. Outside the rest of the world was experiencing the romantic resurgence of feudalism, and inside every lesson she’d been taught had been made obsolete in the twentieth century, and she bounded inside and started giving orders. She’d want soldiers to guard the walls, fully equipped; she didn’t know what direction Lizzy’s troops would be coming from, so it was to guard all the walls, and she gave orders for all the rest of the troops to get ready.
Only then did she realize as she finished running down her list, that Tribune Veneti was standing by, watching her with a scowl. She seemed to have usurped his authority.
“Veneti!” she proclaimed. “We’re going to talk about everything.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And you will tell me what’s been going on.” Veneti was one of her least favorite officers. He was a scowler and extra-obsessed with discipline, and had far too high an opinion of Livia for the mental peace and quiet of anyone who didn’t torture kittens, but at least this meant that he listened to her.
“After you tried to kill Livia, Countess, ma’am,” said Veneti, “Bloody Lizzy came out of stasis and finished the job. Decimus is organizing the retreat. Bruno is dead.”
“Got it. What do her forces look like?”
“Unknown, ma’am.”
“... Completely unknown?”
“She has at least three knights active, Were -”
“- We killed him -” Junia interjected.
“- Mase, and an unknown boiler.”
“We killed him, too,” said Junia.
“So other than one noncombat henchman, we don’t know if she has any troops,” Junia said.
“No, ma’am.”
“... Why are we retreating?”
“Bloody Lizzy Balog, ma’am.”
She gave Tribune Veneti a frosty look.
“Bring in flamethrower squads. Call Lombardi, Bianchi, and Russo, theirs are the best. We’re going to roast Bloody Lizzy Balog. Oh, Tribune - ”
“Ma’am?”
“We’re allied with Victoria Ward of the fifth district, who’s secretly Ilderia, and backing her for the throne. Pass it along to the other officers, won’t you? We don’t want to shoot our friends.”
“Ma’am.”
She listened to reports coming in from all over the city. Lots of news, most of it useless. Her flamethrower squads assembled, and she went out to lead them -
“Attacks on the east wall - west - south -”
The wrong kind of news. Reports came in, all in a burst.
“Tell me,” she said.
“The Royal Army.”
- - -
When she made it into the command room she saw it for herself, through cameras looking down from surveillance posts.
All of them were there. Every combat robot in the Royal Army, approaching from almost every direction. Tens of thousands, at least; probably more like hundreds of thousands. Millions? Levy drones, of course, wave after wave of them with their gun-hands that shot beams that could kill her soldiers, gigantic Juggernaut models that were living siege engines, the handfuls of Paladins, scattered here and there, that had survived the disaster. More and more they came; they weren’t afraid of bullets, they had no flesh to pierce. Jacketed lead wasn’t intended to break metal, it was supposed to damage flesh, but bullets wouldn’t stop the robot army - even if one of them had both legs and an arm blown off, it could still shoot.
And there were more coming in from the air; the more common type of drone, flying and wheeling above her district, opening fire from above, dodging or being blown apart by Livia’s AA guns, and then bigger robot airships, too, made in imitation of Voidwrath’s invasion ships loaded with lasers, missiles firing -
Junia considered her options for half a second - “Tell the troops to hold the walls, Veneti, you’re in charge here.”
“And yourself, ma’am?”
“I?” She grinned. “I’m going to lead my army.”
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