Honor is a byproduct of service, to both the Ar+++++, and to your Empress. Serve, and be well. Serve, and you will never truly die, for your name will be immortalized through her.
-The Warlock of Ceres, Advisor to the Empress Immortal
//MARS
//OLYMPUS MONS (PRE-DESTRUCTION)
//13.30.1978 AV
//OUTER RING OF OLYMPUS
The sound was deafening.
The combined roar of atmospheric landers, the firing of weapons, the radio chatter of thousands of Vodrant leaders, and the screams of the Grailborn whelps as they charged into the wall of fire from the turrets and the men beside them, merged into one constant reverberation.
War normally was little else- the sound of it, interspersed with brief moments of lucidity when the battle came.
For now, it was a waiting game. The Grail's warriors, the pale insectoid whelps that served her, came out of the holes within Olympus in droves, rushing onward to the constant barrage of artillery. Once the outer ring of anti-orbital batteries was disabled with sufficient loss of life and metal, the mountain could undergo orbital bombardment from the ships above. Massive tungsten rods fell onto the surface not too far from their perimeter. It was dangerous, but if even a single Grailborn escaped, the Grail could as well. A fragment of her consciousness resided in every insectoid clone that was spat out from the organic machines beneath the Martian surface.
There were millions, and yet more arose. Dakai imagined that if a non-Vodranti were here, they surely would have gone deaf long ago. Even now, the noise was testing her abilities, just as the Grail was now. But it surely knew it was hopeless. With sufficient damage, Olympus itself would crash down upon the subterranean facility that housed the Grail's physical body. Atomics were not even necessary, but the leader of the Clan of Chariklo, their Gesala, insisted it be used, and so he supplied 3 atomics from his personal stores. The First Legion, despite their connection to the Empress, only supplied 1. The First Legion (although Dakai had always known them as the Clan of Ceres before the Empress' arrival) gave so little to the assault despite their personal connection to the Empress. Their tribunates had not even arrived, only 3 or so Kenyr and their craft. Regardless, men were men. And when facing the Grailborn, you needed as many weapons as men to wield them.
The swarm began to dwindle. They were whittling them down. In only a gregorian hour, said the Chariklo Gesala from his orbiting craft, they could leave the atomics to detonate without fear of Grailborn sabotage. The atomics here were of a unique sort of weapon, for unlike a typical atomic, they burrowed deep into the earth, a massive flare burning through the ground via a sustained fission reaction, before detonating beneath the surface. The Zacharite Scholars believed they were utilized for terraforming during the pre-Epoch Age of Industry, a sort of "bunker-buster" that would dig into the ground before detonating near the mantle, stirring the tectonics into action. The Empress' engine-warlocks had modified the weapons to detonate far sooner. Such a violent explosion would destroy not only Olympus Mons, but the area above and beneath it.
War had come to Mars, once again.
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