//------------------------------// // The Coming Age // Story: Full Hive // by JamesJameson //------------------------------// The changeling was small and skinny underneath his grey overcoat and his bright teal scarf, and so was the shortsword tucked under his belt, but to Queen Chrysalis, future Queen of All, every drone was tiny. She was glad to see this one. She didn’t know if she had ever seen him before or would ever see him again, but he was panting so heavily that he could only bring news of a battle, and Chrysalis was eager for the Lyctida campaign to begin in earnest. Even if it was certainly going to be like pulling teeth, it would be something different, and the last four campaigns had been indistinguishable from each other besides a few key moments. Fighting a rebel army rather than a single Queen would challenge Chrysalis in new ways. “Your highness!” The messenger yelled into the tent, bowing down as he did so. “The formation of Fourth-Commander Trimmel met the enemy force! They were attacked with a new war machine and his formation was forced off of the hill! He is taking his troops to the secondary line to make a new stand!” Chrysalis leaned forwards in spite of the subtle laughter of the other generals. So things were already going off the rails. Her voice boomed through the command tent. “A new war machine, huh? Tell me about it.” “Yes, ma’am!” The messenger continued. “I saw it myself! There were four, one leader and three others, and they moved under their own power! They were covered in steel plates, and they had a turret placed on top with a machine-gun of some sort inside! They inflicted 20 losses on the formation before Fourth-Commander Trimmel decided that staying put would accomplish nothing and retreated! The war machines did not pursue, and rebel troops are now on the hill!” Chrysalis thought for a second, but nothing came to her. She turned to her left, where Factrix of the former house of Alvaria sat, staring downward in concentration. She suddenly turned and looked at Chrysalis, her pitch-black eyes asking for permission to speak. The Queen nodded. Factrix turned to the messenger. “Did these machines leave behind a trail of smoke?” “Yes, ma’am! It was like a furnace!” He replied energetically. Factrix turned back to Chrysalis. “My Queen, I would bet that those are coal-tractors. Unless there is a radical new technology, they cannot go far without needing more fuel, and their armor is only thick enough to resist rifle rounds.” “And what do you recommend?” Chrysalis goaded. “If we had a few dozen hunter’s rifles, we could send them to the formation, but we do not. I recommend we transfer some light cannons from Enza’s fourth-unit to Trimmel’s region. The heavy projectile should have no trouble getting through the armor, and the operators can’t see outside without opening them up to fire, so their vision is likely restricted to small ports so that they might not notice the cannons until its too late.” Factrix explained. Just then, a second messenger ran into the command tent and stooped down besides the first. “Your highness!” He opened. “I have been sent by Fourth-Commander Enza! Fourth-Commander Trimmel has sent us a counterfeit message supposedly from your highness, demanding that he give ten of his light cannons and their solid shot to him!” Cries rang out in the tent. “Treachery! Betrayal!” The assembled sixth-commanders yelled as they argued amongst each other about what to do and how to punish him. “Your highness!” Yelled one of them, Synovial, as he stood up aggressively. “Give me the order and I will lead my army against him this instant!” Chrysalis saw this and laughed. The generals calmed down and stared at her with expectation in their eyes. “Not until I hear that he has been forced back again!” She rubbed her hooves together. Factrix was smiling too. Yes, this was going to be an interesting campaign. Trimmel Araxis du Gardis sat in the top of the pine tree, scanning the horizon with an eyeglass. He had a few of his soldiers doing the same elsewhere, but he wanted to see what happened next himself. It felt like it would be very important. Mostly to his career. The last cannons had gotten into position a few minutes ago. The treeline was adequate cover, mostly because it was the only cover and he had to convince himself this would work. He had to commit some dire insubordination to pull this scheme off, but it was his first real command under the Queen herself, and damn it all, he wasn’t going to be pushed around by the same breed of lowlife thug as those he had been manipulating by the hundred at this time last year. Next thing he’d know, he’d be pushed around by those doddering old fools in the command tent, too. A kilometer away, the hill he had been forced to give up sat there, taunting him. On the slope of that hill he’d had caskets buried and detonators wired, and at his call, a smokescreen would explode out of the ground to cover his retreat. But it wasn’t a retreat, his troops weren’t going to budge, and when the enemy came to press the advantage, they’d find that tear gas was mixed in with the smoke and they’d be cut down on the near side. That trick had worked wonders in Severyana, but here, the war machines had simply stayed a distance away. The wind had never been right to carry the noxious gas to them, so nothing had happened. They picked off his soldiers one by one until he sounded the call to pull back to the second line, using the trick smokescreen as a real one. Six hundred of the Royal Army’s best driven back by four strange objects. It wasn’t going to happen again. And it wouldn’t if he had figured out a way to beat them, but he knew very little about them. He knew was that they were from the Saturnalians, which would be very helpful if he could talk to any of them, but they preferred to stay at shooting range. The cannons were just a guess. Some of his soldiers had better eyes, and they had seen changelings in strange yellow-green spotted coats moving about on top of that hill. Now, he saw that four familiar black plumes of smoke were coming over the ridge. Calls rang out along the line from the other treetop scouts that the armored carriages were coming again. Once again, they were alone, trundling down the hill at a pace a changeling could maybe outrun. Trimmel looked down. “Remember, everyone! It’s the cannons that will be doing the work, so keep them protected!” Assorted shouts of acknowledgement came back to him and he put the spyglass back to his eye. The strange machines were roughly-identical collections of steel-grey boxes and triangles. They had four wheels, two smaller ones in the front and two massive ones in the back, and in between the two was the biggest box of their shape, with a squat metal crate on top of it that swiveled back and forth with its machine gun poking out the front. There were once again four of them, each with the symmetric and jagged symbol of the Saturnalians painted in white on the sides, and when they reached the bottom of the slope, Trimmel’s stolen cannons fired. They shot out massive gouts of white fog, and his soldiers promptly started to fire in the direction of the machines, partially in the hopes of hitting them but mostly to obscure the smoke from the real guns. The machine guns of the vehicles were single-barreled, which must have been very difficult to build. Trimmel wondered how great an engineer the rebels must have. His own had eight barrels to go with their eight internal receivers. Not that he was complaining. His own machine guns were made of scrap metal and wood and look like they were found in a garbage bin, but Factrix’s contraptions were going to change warfare, he knew it. He was lucky to have thirty-one for his six-hundred-plus soldiers, and wouldn’t swap them out for fifteen if all that changed was that they got prettier. Black powder smoke filled the air soon enough, and it was only Trimmel’s high position that afforded him a decent view of the field. From here, he couldn’t see the bullets impacting the ground or the war machines, just the sprays of dirt from when a cannonball landed. They were going wide or short or far but they were getting closer to their targets with every shot. The tanks fired back, spraying rounds into the forest inarticulately. After a few minutes of trading fire, a hatch opened on the leader vehicle, and Trimmel caught a periscope coming out from the top. It looked around and a bundle of fireworks was thrown out. Bright red sparks shot out in all directions, each one with a loud whistle accompanying it, and the vehicles all stopped, then reversed and started to move backwards, crawling back up the hill the way they had came. That must have been them signaling to each other. Their environmental awareness must be terrible. Cheers and hollers began to fill the undergrowth below. Third-Commander Manti clumsily flapped up to Trimmel’s tree. “Well, officer, I’ll be damned. That actually worked. What do we do next?” He asked. “First thing is to send a messenger to the Queen explaining that it worked. That way, she isn’t mad I stole those artillery pieces.” Trimmel commented, continuing to look at the field and its splotches of brown upturned earth. “As for our next move… I suppose that we should have another fourth and their cannons assist us in surrounding the hill, and send the rest of the army forwards while we besiege the position.” Manti landed on the branch besides him and looked out across the field. “Sir, with all due respect, that plan would fall apart if they have another group of those monstrous things held in reserve.” “I do not believe that they do.” Trimmel replied. “The devices were their superweapons, and they revealed them to us during the very first engagement. Their opening move was to show their trump card. I would have waited until more of our forces were committed so that we couldn’t react.” He floated the spyglass to Manti and continued. “What’s more, they retreated when they found we were shooting hidden cannon at them. That means that they knew we had the ability to defeat them and they attacked with those things first anyways.” Manti scanned the battlefield through the wooden instrument. “Even if they have more than four, that’s an awfully cavalier attitude about them. They must be horribly expensive to produce.” “Unless you expect the battle to be over in only a few engagements,” Trimmel countered. “I would bet that their plan was to force their way through our positions, defensive line by defensive line, using those machines, until they reached our camp, at which point they could strike at the heart of our supply lines and force the entire army into a hasty retreat.” “…And if they are relying on their armored machines to thrust to the heart of the army, they have no reason to hold any back once the first ones are deployed because the attack needs as much power as possible.” Manti continued for him. “I see your logic. What do you think they’re going to do now that we’ve already countered their primary movement?” Trimmel stared pensively at the overwhelmingly green Lyctidan countryside. “Who knows? If they’re smart, they have another kind of war machine that they haven’t shown off yet that they’ll attack with, and that one will be used in a real plan designed to make use of over-caution about this current one. If they aren’t, they’ll try to salvage some sort of maneuver out of this. If they’re in between, they’ll leave and try for a battle somewhere else.” He realized he still heard the sounds of hollering soldiers. “Now give me back my spyglass, tell those guys to get back into fight mode in case the enemy makes another move, and send someone to the Queen telling her what happened and that we’re holding position.” A few hours later, the messenger took a stick from the forest floor and pointed to the map he had brought with him. “And so, there are battles between infantry units all along the treeline a few kilometers to the north. The rebels have their artillery firing, and though they’ve just sent skirmishers forward so far, the battle seems to have properly started. So says the Queen.” Distantly, there was a rolling thunder of artillery pieces and rifle fire, but it was just a faint noise. Trimmel pondered the battle lines. “And what will she have us do?” “She has sent some her guards to hurry to a nearby lodge in the hopes of finding hunter’s rifles. If they can get some, they’ll bring them back, and then you can re-take the hill. Until that point, though, you just have to hold position and send word if the tractors come down off of it .” The hill was the sole hill for a distance in either direction that laid within the corridor of flat plains separating Trimmel’s forest from the one the rebels were operating from. It gave the owner a clear view of many kilometers of empty field in all directions. It had been trivial to send a few teams forwards to simply watch around the back of it, hiding in the tall grass and ready to send a flare if the ‘tractors’ were spotted retreating from behind the hill where Trimmel and his soldiers supposedly couldn’t see them. “Tell her that I got her orders and will follow them. And that I’m thankful for the honor of being the first to destroy the enemy’s superweapons.” Trimmel replied. “Well, if that’s all from you, I have no news here-“ “Commander! The machines are coming again!” One of the tree-scouts yelled. Trimmel cursed under his breath and flew up to where she was watching from. He grabbed the spyglass for himself and looked, and sure enough, the four tractors were once again thundering towards his position. But not like last time. They were slower, he noticed. That wasn’t right, they’d be more vulnerable to the cannons. Then he noticed that these were different tractors. Where the large central box had been with the turret on top, there was now just one great metal face. From up here, he could see that it had no roof and no back. It also didn’t have a machine gun, but it did have a cannon of its own placed into its steel container. What’s more, as he looked, he caught a small line in the grass, and followed it to notice that the enemy soldiers were moving too. A few hundred of them. They were ahead of the tractors, and he hadn’t noticed them because they were so far ahead, but also because of their green-brown ponchos and their spread-out formation. Behind all of it, cresting the top of the hill, the original four tractors and their machine guns were speeding down, ready to support the attack. “All soldiers, the battle is starting again!” He shouted down. “Be on the lookout for their skirmishers, they’re dressed in camouflage and only a few hundred meters away!” There was a furious rustling beneath him as the troops, many of whom had drifted out of position after a few hours of inactivity, snapped back to their posts. “Cannons, fire when ready! They’re in range!” A shout of acknowledgement came from below and the gunfire started again. Sharp cracks and loud booms filled the air almost as thick as the white smoke of the burnt powder. Trimmel watched as the enemy force reacted, and was shocked by what he saw. The enemy skirmishers had rifles, but they also had crossbows. In sets of three or four, they cautiously let a few bolts loose, then their next shot, fired in unison, was entirely made of bolts who’s heads had been lit on fire. That the enemy was using crossbows alongside their rifles was absolutely bizarre to Trimmel. Why would a force use both? Why open with normal bolts instead of going straight for the flaming ones? And why use flaming bolts at all when it rained just two days ago? What would be set on fire? One of the cannon tractors fired, and the one besides it soon followed. He tracked the shots with his spyglass and found that they landed… right next to where a half-dozen flaming crossbow bolts had landed… right next to one of his hidden cannons. The shells exploded on impact, throwing up massive clouds of dirt and smoke. So what was the method. Trimmel leapt down into the woods again and found the Queen’s messenger still waiting. “Here’s what you need to tell the Queen. We’re going to be retreating to Enza’s position. There is a new kind of armored tractor, one with a cannon instead of a turret, and they’re using skirmishers with fire arrows to mark out cannons so that these artillery tractors can see and destroy them from distance.” The messenger was ducking down to avoid the shrapnel and the gunfire, even though nobody was shooting at the Queen’s soldiers here, just her cannons. “You’re retreating again? You’ve only been fighting for fifteen minutes!” “Yes, and I’m not happy about it, but Factrix will know what to do with this information and I don’t! So-” He paused. “No, wait, there’s one more thing. The enemy is sending their line infantry forwards, not their skirmishers.” “How can you tell?” The messenger asked. “Because there are no skirmishers! The enemy army is designed for a battlefield with machine guns and everyone standing in dense lines just makes you easy targets! That’s why they’re spread out across the front line!” Trimmel yelled. “The enemy either has a dread commander or a foreigner in charge, their entire force is built for a war nobody here was taught to fight! Make sure you do not forget that part!” The messenger nodded. “Yes, sir!” He shouted before entering a dead run backwards to the HQ. “Manti! Get over here!” Trimmel yelled. Shortly, Third-Commander Manti appeared. At times like this, it was good to observe the battle from right next to where one of your lower officers needed to be. “Sir, what do you need?” Manti shouted over the sound of gunfire and explosions. Trimmel motioned around. “Get two firsts from your formation. One is going to send the news across the line that we’re pulling back again to Enza’s position. Everyone needs to stay with the cannons, their vehicles can’t follow us into the forest well but the enemy still has normal soldiers nearby who can grab them if they’re unguarded, and we have the numbers to beat back those infantry.” “Got it, sir! And the other first?” “The other first needs to be your fastest. Break it up into pairs and send the pairs around the battlefield telling everyone that this is the enemy’s main force, not their advance, and that if the enemy doesn’t have any machine guns or tractors then there’s nothing protecting them from a charge.” Trimmel said. “Do you understand?” “I don’t, but I get what you’re asking, sir. I’ll find the right soldiers for it.” Manti replied. “Damn right you will.” Trimmel slapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, if there’s any justice in the world then we’ll get medals for our heroically swallowing our pride to save our formations.” “I hope you’re right, sir.” Manti worriedly answered. “So, how do you like being a fourth-commander, you blathering idiot?” Fourth-Commander Enza asked Trimmel as the latter finished receiving the report on the state of his formation. “At my age, there being no dull moments is exciting,” Trimmel dismissed. Enza’s face scrunched up. He hadn’t seen combat all day and it was nearly sunset, which he didn’t mind except that he’d still managed to suffer losses in his fourth. “Listen, smart guy, you stole ten of my light cannons and still didn’t have enough to save your position. How many are left, huh?” “Seven.” Trimmel answered. And five-hundred-fifty of my six hundred-twenty troops, and twenty-five of my thirty-one shiny new machine guns. He continued internally. The hill was bad, but the shelling in the forest had done some real damage. He had lost three Factrix guns to that, and three more were damaged beyond repair by mechanical faults after being thrown around so much in one day. Both the loss of compatriots and the loss of heavy equipment stung for different reasons. Having so many machine guns was why he had put up with his “new” undersized fourth, which was supposed to be over a thousand strong. “Seven! Where is the Warlord of Severyana, huh? Stay in your lane! If the Queen thought you needed cannons, you would have already gotten them!” Enza yelled. “Listen, what you should be worried about is your position being taken apart by heavy guns on heavy carriages that you can’t destroy. How about we hear what the Queen has to say about that, huh? Because I got sent permission to pull away your cannons after I had already beat back the first wave with them.” One of the soldiers, sitting in the nearby fighting trench, said, “Uh, sirs?” Enza ignored him and kept screaming. “So you think you’re so brilliant that you get to disregard the chain of command? That’s it?” “’If fighting is sure to result in victory then you must fight’, you ignoramus! I saw how to win and I didn’t want to wait for the Queen to tell you to pretend you understood it after the moment was already gone!” “SIRS!” “WHAT?” Both officers turned to look at him. There were two changelings walking up to the trench lines from the enemy’s side of the battlefield. Both were wearing black tunics and black pants and black… hats? Theirs had brims, but unlike the wide and conical straw hats of the Queen’s soldiers, these ones were tall and deeply ornamental. The one in the lead was carrying a piece of white cloth on a stick for some reason. His outfit was foreign and heavily-decorated, but it was all styles and symbols Trimmel couldn’t recognize. The two officers faced the pair of strangers as they made it up to the front lines. The other one was younger, and he spoke first in full view of the many confused changelings. “Der Fuhrer would like to speak with whoever was the commander of the forward position on the hill and in the forest. Alone. Do not worry, we will still be within sight.” Enza and Trimmel looked at each other. “You want to talk to him?” Enza asked quietly. “I kind of want to, just to hear what he has to say.” Trimmel admitted. “Your soldiers will make sure there’s no funny business, right?” “It’s not them I’m worried about.” Ezra stated, staring at Trimmel. “Oh, seriously?” Trimmel loudly whispered. “Go to hell, Enza. I’m going to see what he wants. If I get shot, my boys might beat you to death.” He turned and walked over to the trench and jumped over it. The assistant of the ‘fuhrer’ was young, but on closer inspection, the ‘fuhrer’ was also not much older than Trimmel himself, he just had eighty years of weathering on his face that made him look fifty from a distance instead of thirty. The trio moved a few steps away from the defensive line in silence. When they were distant enough that they could talk without being heard, the black-coated strangers turned to Trimmel. He turned into the one that seemed to be the leader, and asked, “So what do you want to talk about?” In a day full of bizarre occurrences, the strangest was yet to come. The leader spoke, in the most halting and clumsy changeling Trimmel had ever heard... and the dullest. “I find your tactics worth considering.” He managed to eke out through his veil of unearned confidence. Every word had a strange candor to it on top of being the wrong one for the situation. “Please tell me what you think about Chrysalis.” “I was in Severyana. If I came back after that, then it’s safe to assume that I love Queen Chrysalis, as any right-thinking changeling should.” Trimmel retorted. “And even there I never met anyone who wielded our language as amateurishly as you do. I didn’t even know that was possible for a changeling.” The junior of the two stepped forwards. “You’ll have to forgive him. He’s not from around here… in a way. I assure you, though, Dieter Heinrich is the future of the nation.” Trimmel cocked an eyebrow. “As I said, he’s not from around here. I’m Rosin Lyctia, future doctor of politics, and his translator.” Rosin stretched out his hoof. “It’s not that. I thought it was some sort of fake assumed name. So it’s the Saturnalians we’ve been fighting?” Trimmel replied. “[Indeed.]” Dieter said in heavily-accented yet accurate Severyanan with a flatness that transcended translation issues. “[My co-revolutionaries are pathetic, and I’m here to do better. Are my panzers not terrifying?]” “[That they are,]” Trimmel admitted. Rosin was staring baffled at the exchange, but that was fine. “[I’ve dealt with Prandialists before, and was shocked to find that they had such a leader. I do not know what you want, but it’s no surprise that you don’t like them either, you are at least a general of vision. But why are you fighting with them instead of against them?]” “[Because I need some help to get to the point where I can win with my own army alone. The Prandialists are motivated, but their minds are possessed by the strangest form of degeneracy I’ve ever seen.]” Dieter explained. “[And that’s why I fight also against the Queens. Their weakness allowed these terrorists to fester and grow, and so they too must be replaced by a leader who can truly live up to the spirit of the changeling kind.]” “[You.]” “[Maybe. Maybe not. No matter what, if such a leader exists, I won’t sit idle while they struggle to bring the race back to its former glory. No matter who it is or where they are found, my army will be their sword.]” Dieter looked to the ramparts, and at Enza, who was watching suspiciously with his troops. “[I have found few who could possibly have the mandate of destiny that is needed, but everyone I’ve met with a spark of it has joined my band so far. So I repeat, what do you think about Queen Chrysalis? I can’t imagine she was happy that you requisitioned the cannons needed to save the battle without conferring with her.]” Trimmel smirked. “[How do you know I didn’t ask?]” Dieter stared blankly at him. “[Don’t dodge the question.]” “[She was quite pleased. Royal armies are plagued with lack of initiative, and I admit I may have it in excess, but I’ve always suspected that my promotion was fast-tracked and that that was why. And for what it’s worth, after your second attack, I found that her orders would have been to do exactly what I did.]” “[Interesting.]” Dieter expressed and then paused. After a few seconds of thought, he continued. “[Could I meet Queen Chrysalis? There may be a small army for her cause if I think she is the one I’m looking for.]”