40. Tornadoes Destroy the Artillery Positions

Tornadoes Destroy the Artillery Positions

Two high-altitude drones recorded the army’s first major battle on its own soil in decades with mechanical indifference.

Images were transmitted in real time to at least seven different facilities for preliminary analysis, from theater command to headquarters in the capital, to civilian contractors, and even farther still to the drone operators themselves.

Computers and humans evaluated firing accuracy and damage before sending the review back to mission control. After the self-propelled guns completed twenty-two of the thirty-nine salvos supported by their onboard capacity, the bombardment ceased.

Of more than one hundred thousand enemy targets on the battlefield, only six hundred and seventy-one had been destroyed.

Of the five targeted enemy structures—including four production centers and the main fortification—not one had suffered more than superficial damage, despite more than one hundred confirmed hits on each.

Analysis of the damage patterns indicated that the structures were not built from black stone or any similar ancient material, but from solid steel. Because their armor had never been penetrated, the total thickness could not even be estimated.

This caused severe concern at every level of military leadership for several reasons.

The enemy’s supernatural powers and the alien creatures that composed their forces were difficult to understand. Simple durability, however, was easy to grasp.

In the opening salvos of one battle, the self-propelled artillery had fired half the number of shells ever fired in the entire service history of that model, and the enemy had not even blinked.

They would run out of ammunition before truly hurting the enemy.

Level-Two artillery units fifty-five kilometers from the enemy base received orders to open fire. At the same time, authorization requests for the allocation of “special” munitions were moving up the chain of command.

Forty-seven multiple launch rocket systems and three times as many newer HIMARS-type systems had been deployed on several low hills fifty-five kilometers from the enemy base.

At that distance, considering the enemy’s known capabilities, fortified artillery positions were deemed unnecessary.

The units still had some ground troops and more numerous air escorts. Most armed helicopters, considered “unsafe” after the enemy’s lightning attacks, maintained overwatch from what was believed to be a safe range.

No one truly expected the rocket artillery carriers known as “commander sniper rifles” to come under attack, but caution was still preferable.

Each multiple launch rocket system carried twelve M30 or M31 rockets. The former carried hundreds of submunitions apiece, enough for twelve rockets to cover nearly half a square kilometer and destroy infantry, unarmored vehicles, or civilian structures. The latter could deliver a two-hundred-pound warhead with considerable precision, damaging even lightly fortified bunkers.

Both types of rockets had maximum speeds above Mach 2, and all twelve rockets could be fired within a single minute.

The HIMARS systems carried the same types of rockets, though each vehicle carried “only” six. In total, that made one thousand four hundred and ten guided rockets.

During the past several days of preparation, given enemy numbers and the absolute priority of the conflict, enough ammunition for multiple full reloads had been delivered to every unit.

All told, this represented almost four years of the nation’s rocket-artillery production, committed to the first modern war ever fought on home soil.

Since the older, lighter artillery had proven ineffective, and aircraft were gravely threatened by the enemy’s weather manipulation, heavier conventional weapons were the only option left.

Because if these weapons failed as well, nuclear authorization procedures were already underway.

When the first true guided rockets appeared, a thin smile touched Legion Commander Mott’s pale, bloodless lips.

At last, proof that he was not facing primitives who could simply be trampled underfoot, but an opponent at least somewhat worthy of battle.

The violent energy any one of their missiles contributed to his influence was greater than that of a hundred of their artillery shells. This was not because the missiles themselves were more powerful, but because guidance and deliberate intent lay behind them.

The connection between weapon and user was stronger. Though still weak in terms of personal power generation, their collective effect on the balance of magical power was far more significant.

As the missiles approached, the five completed lightning towers under his command activated.

When the first wave of missiles entered the towers’ range, bolts of lightning shot out like jagged torrents of elemental violence.

Every missile struck was destroyed by a force sufficient to level a house or tear a five-pace-deep crater in the earth.

Five missiles were destroyed.

Then ten.

Then fifteen.

But the towers’ firing rate was not enough to intercept them all.

By the time the missiles were only half a league from the towers and his ground troops, only forty-five had been intercepted.

Of course, that became largely irrelevant once his sixty-two bound “demons” answered the threat.

They were not truly demons, of course, just as a one-meter dragon-shaped statue was not truly a dragon.

Some apprentice, buried deep in history, had thought of the name. It had survived purely because of its appeal. Every mage wanted to seem important, and what could sound more important than commanding demons?

Sometimes Mott wondered whether the inventor of this particular construct had risen to power and status and become his present master. The theatricality certainly fit.

At all other times, Mott buried such thoughts in the deepest and darkest corner of his mind. His master might accept criticism, but mockery was always swiftly suppressed.

As usual, the summoned and bound demons created self-guided fireballs and launched them.

Under ideal conditions, a bound demon could fire a self-guided fireball in less than a second, though it could maintain only one at a time, and the speed at which it guided the fireball was inversely proportional to accuracy.

When a fireball moved no faster than an arrow in flight, it would never miss. If launched at the speed of a meteor, it could hit a running person three kilometers away.

For those reasons, against any flying target not beyond the capabilities of mortal armies, it was an ideal short-range interception weapon.

Incoming missiles were both simpler and slower targets than the fireballs were capable of handling.

In a sea of fire above an occupied, half-ruined city, nine out of every ten incoming rockets were destroyed.

The remaining one hundred and forty-two rockets struck their intended targets.

Tens of thousands of submunitions shredded several square kilometers of streets and mountains of debris, while the more powerful rockets blasted craters into the black steel towers and fortifications.

Thirty-five thousand undead infantry were annihilated. Seventeen thousand suffered moderate damage. Seven smaller towers were warped by explosions. Four crypts had their armor cratered so badly they could barely stand upright.

In less than a minute, Legion Commander Mott’s forces had taken losses that would have paralyzed any mortal army.

Worse still, the locals were already reloading. In a few minutes, another devastating salvo would come, and then another, and another.

But then Legion Commander Mott finished his dinner.

He vanished every scrap of leftover food, leaving only a clean plate and a spoon for a local girl turned ghost to collect.

Then he began to cast.

In the span of one heartbeat, the power that had once spread magical fog through three thousand cubic kilometers of air seized a cylindrical volume of atmosphere half a kilometer across and four kilometers high, and twisted it.

Before anyone could react, the air mass within that space accelerated as if fired from a cannon, then was bound by an unbreakable rope and forced to spin in place.

Three seconds later, its winds reached twice the speed of any recorded tornado. The entire funnel moved faster than most race cars.

The gigantic tornado began to advance.

Then the magic continued.

For the half minute before its momentum ran out and the funnel collapsed, the tornado swept through the artillery position it had targeted like the fist of an angry god.

Winds three times faster than those that had once lifted ninety-ton train cars from their tracks and hurled them into hillsides picked up every vehicle as if it were a toy.

Winds still twice as fast as those that had torn thousand-ton metal power relays and brick walls apart like chalk ripped every man-made structure in the area from the ground and scattered fragments nearly a kilometer in every direction.

Soldiers and engineers exposed in the open died instantly, their bodies crushed like eggs kicked apart.

Operators and gunners inside heavily armored units were less fortunate. Some survived for hours inside the twisted wreckage of their vehicles.

Every few seconds, the immense power of a strategic weather mage continued to take effect, triggering another brief tornado.

Short-lived, localized phenomena required far less magic, allowing Legion Commander Mott to expand the range of his casting.

He was not his master.

He could not reach across four hundred leagues to call up a city-flattening hurricane, nor could he use the deeper mysteries of Mavis to summon earthquakes that shattered mountains.

But for this theater of war, his relatively weaker power was enough.

Over five minutes, every meaningful local military formation within sixty kilometers was struck by a tornado.