Antumbra - A Lost Cause

Embittered - Chapter Sixty Five

The fighting on the front lines had grown so hectic, the Government had no choice but to declare a state of emergency for the entire nation. This was war, pure and unfettered. From all fronts, on land and in the sky, the IRT offensive grew. They had never fought this hard before, not even during an election, and with the treaty broken, no path was off-limits. The obvious route for them to storm the Habitat was through the Lows, in order to attack from below, and so many Eclipse soldiers were stationed in the wastes as a blockade. Anti-air defenses had been frantically established, with wire-guided cluster missiles, blackout mines, and even twentieth century shell-firing cannons. Anything the GDU could find to beat them back, but as the wastes slowly became a graveyard for friend and foe alike, there seemed to be no end to the amount of bodies they were willing to throw at them. To the soldiers desperately fighting for their homeland, it had become a horror show of increasingly fanatical foes with no purpose beyond conquest and death.

Yet there was conflict within the nation itself, amongst its leadership, and not all the soldiers fighting were doing so out of patriotism. Some, like the strike team assembled by the Administration to hunt down Captain Marcus Wilhelm, weren't carrying out raids on enemy formations. Instead the force of six Argonauts and two troop carriers descended quickly onto the old nuclear missile base just inside the wastes. This particular sector hadn't seen much battle, and so they were easily able to approach quickly and quietly, not wanting to give the disgraced Captain a chance to retaliate. Using schematics supplied by the Grand Admiral, the Argonaut unit breached the silo's hidden opening while the troops entered through the unmarked gateways that led to the base's interior. With two full platoons of foot soldiers and six suits bursting their way into every section of the facility, the base was quickly swarmed, yet much to their confusion was apparently deserted. The implications of this fact barely had time to register in their minds before the entire base went up in flames, obliterating all evidence and anyone inside, even those inside machines. Such was the force of the bombs he had planted that Marcus could feel the shudder through the Earth itself all the way in his secondary base hidden within the outskirts.

"Sir," an Ensign next to him began to report, but Marcus knew already.

"Our base was discovered so quickly," he mused, "which means they must have got hold of Cassius."

"The Commander?" The young Ensign asked, "he wouldn't have disclosed the location willingly. They must have interrogated him!"

"Indeed," Marcus continued preparations despite the commotion, "however, Commander Benoit is more than capable of taking care of himself. Besides, we can't worry about him now, as cruel as that sounds."

"Sir," the Ensign snapped a crisp salute and returned to his own station. The two, along with a full staff of technicians and engineers oversaw first flight preparations, ensuring the two units were good for deployment.

"MA-X1, MA-X2, begin launch calculations," Marcus didn't expect to hear any response, as the acknowledgement was clear on his screen as the digital monitor showed green for the onboard computers. The machines would do all the thinking, all the pilots needed to do was fight. A moment later both launches signaled, and a dull thud reverberated throughout their base.

"Launch successful," the Ensign reported, and Marcus stood up from his chair, pulling away an errant strand of hair from in front of his eyes and tucking it back along with the rest.

"Continue monitoring them," he smiled to himself, "I'm going out as well, I'd like to witness for myself the fruits of our labour." The Ensign merely gave a formal nod as Marcus exited the control room and headed towards the main hangar, stopping to remove his jacket on the way there. He didn't bother putting on a flight suit. It wouldn't be necessary if all went according to plan, and now was not the time to have doubts. He stepped into the elevator that connected the control room deep underground to the storage deck where his Doberman Light Interceptor was kept, and found his mind traveling. Things had not gone off without a hitch, but the losses so far were acceptable. He felt a genuine pang of regret at losing Arva, and when he gained his seat in power he swore to dedicate resources to recovering her, if only out of gratitude. Thanks to her, he had gleaned much from Antumbra and its twin, enough to gain a broader understanding of the world, an understanding which gave him much to consider in his moments of solitude such as this.