Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ A New Future 2 - First Blood ❯ March of Juuban ( Chapter 34 )

This was originally published by me under the name Anduril at Anime Addventures, with the only changes being a few corrections in spelling, punctuation and the occasional word choice to make things clearer. If you like the beginning of my story but think I've gone off the rails, or have your own ideas for a great branch-off, or think I'm taking too long to update and want to continue the story yourself, come to Anime Addventures and join in the fun!

I claim no ownership rights to any of the works of Rumiko Takahashi, Naoko Takeuchi, or anything in the GURPS Ogre and GURPS Tales of the Solar Patrol settings published by Steve Jackson Games. Everything else is mine.

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Tribune Marcus Manilius Otho ignored the chorus of chopped-off screams behind him that more than likely heralded the destruction of his reserves as he dropped from a sprint to a jog the last few yards to the inner edge of his circle of troops. Turning as he reached the first line of soldiers, he quickly checked his staff, and yes, they were all still with him. That done, he looked back toward the center, and saw just what he'd expected — the reserve that he and his staff had been standing beside when this world's protectors had started their attack had been obliterated, and the newcomers were charging through its moaning, shrieking remains and ... and splitting up? Yes, one group was headed for the gateway, and the other had turned to race straight away from him toward the opposite edge of the circle of soldiers. No, they were stopping at the crystal column there, and —

“Sir, by the gateway,” Domitius said, a younger son of a rising family that had joined Manilius' staff to check off the military service box needed for a political career. “The magical girl with the polearm, isn't she supposed to be strictly a close-in fighter?”

“What?” Manilius turned his attention to the first enemy group, now stretched across the portal as best he could tell from the angle (no sight of the guards, most likely two more casualties). He lifted his eyes to his Heads-Up Display, highlighted the point and angle he wanted to view, and the cohort net selected a soldier looking the right direction and brought up his vidcam while signaling him to freeze in place and provide a stable platform. Manilius frowned as he examined the head-on view of the young magical girl now on his HUD, standing in the middle of the line of warriors stretched across the portal, a polearm longer than she was tall held upright in a wide two-handed grip. Domitius had a point, the briefings had all reported that this particular magical girl had never exhibited any distance attacks, but that stance had signaled her use of her energy shield and there were no soldiers close —

His eyes widened as the polearm's long blade began to glow, the purplish light he had seen in clips of her energy shield forming a coruscating ball ... and then the blade dropped.

For a second, the world went totally silent — not even his own heartbeat was audible in his ears. Then the silence ended with a thundering roar that shook the battlefield, and for a split second his HUD displayed an onrushing wave of coruscating energy tearing up the sward before the view winked out. Whirling, he stared at the point where his soldier's vidcam had been located, just in time to see a half-cone of the purplish energy slam into a building at the edge of the park beyond his line of legionnaires. The building vanished in a cloud of dust and debris as it literally exploded.

Manilius ignored the soldiers that stepped forward and raised their shields to provide cover for him and his staff from the plunging debris, the sound of pieces of brick and mortar pelting the shields to focus again on his HUD. He brought up the display showing the locations of all his men in the park — and froze in shock at the sight.

Normally, the kinetic suppressor field that went up with the appearance of the initial portal and expanded as larger portals were brought in and repeating stations placed protected the legions from the ranged kinetic weapons of the more advanced non-magitech worlds, even the shells and shrapnel of missiles and artillery. However, even the field that made it possible for men armed with swords and shields and battle beasts to conquer worlds armed with guns, tanks and high explosives had its limits, and a soldier that stepped directly on a landmine was going to have a seriously bad day, even if the rest of his squad would be fine. And occasionally, militaries desperate to resist the unstoppable legions would create what were essentially massive mines tens of yards to a side, capable in the right situation of taking out half a cohort in one world-ending roar.

Manilius thought of the time that had happened to his cohort two conquests back as he stared at his HUD in heartsick awe. That time, his locator display had shown an area littered with the symbols of his dead, crippled and wounded men, and even some that through the blind fate that ruled over war came through with hardly a scratch. This time, for a stretch covering almost a twelfth of his circle of troops there wasn't a soul left alive. If she could repeat that massive wave of obliteration....

Hastily, the tribune sought a soldier vidcam still facing the enemy warriors at the portal, and fought to keep from slumping with relief as he saw the polearm-armed girl on her knees, using the haft of her weapon to hold herself up as another dark-haired costumed girl that had been conspicuously absent from his briefings knelt beside her, helping her back behind the others. It looked as if whatever she'd done was sufficiently draining to give him the time needed to keep it from being repeated.

Dropping the vidcam view, Manilius mentally triggered the frequency for the centurion to the north of the hole in his line. “Cincius.”

“Yes, Tribune.”

“Forget holding the perimeter, we'll have to reform it after more reinforcements arrive. Take your men and clear the enemy away from the portal. I'll have Scribonius —”

Another roar interrupted him, this one very human, and Manilius whirled to again stare toward the new gap in his line as scores of women, and a few men, poured out of the doors and windows of the building beside the one that had been obliterated that he could see at that angle. The newcomers were waving swords, maces and spears as they charged screaming toward the gap in his perimeter.

Again bringing up the locater display on his HUD, he blanched at the arc of hostiles charging toward the gap as well as Cincius's century to the north of the hole and Fufius's and what was left of Verginianus's centuries on the other side. “Forget what I said, see to your men,” he hastily ordered his centurion, and broke the connection. The enemy hadn't just known when and where the beachhead would be arriving, they'd even known what the layout would be; his cohort was at the center of an ambush, and the enemy was inside his decision loop, their actions invalidating his plans and orders even as he conceived them.

He watched his HUD for a moment, suppressing a wince as the new attackers hammered into his lines and poured through the gap. Even as the familiar battle mix of shouts of rage and fear, screams of pain and the blacksmith hammering of metal on metal broke out, the attackers coming through the hole split into three groups, two curling back to take his lines from the back while the middle charged down the path of devastation left by the magical girl's massive blast toward the portal.

Suddenly, the overpowering cacophony of the battle that had erupted was overridden by a high, piercing, scraping shriek like nothing he'd ever heard, that seemed to impale his mind through each ear and obliterate all thought. Even as soldiers around him were dropping swords and slamming hands over ears, some dropping to their knees from the pain, the shriek crescendoed in a shattering, tinkling wave and the crystal pillar directly across the park by the opposite side of his perimeter simply came apart in place, the shards dropping straight down.

Well inside his decision loop. Time to change that.

/\

Sailor Pluto watched from the top of the apartment building just on the other side of the point of the enemy lines where the enemy commander was standing, eyes dark as she watched her informally adopted daughter's wave of destruction obliterate everything in its path before smashing into the empty apartment building, pieces of the bodies of the soldiers it had plowed through scattered back along its triangular track, hardly recognizable as men. She really hoped that Saturn wouldn't get close enough to see the bloody results of her attack, not that the lack would keep Setsuna and her platonic kinda-sorta co-wives from needing to comfort their gentle ward after the inevitable nightmares she didn't need to foresee in the girl's future. Though even that was a vast improvement on the hatred and mutual guilt that would have been all that was left of her relationship with the other surviving Outers after Hotaru's death in the thankfully now-vanished former timeline.

Banishing the thought as a concern for a later day, she walked across to the opposite side of the roof and looked down, nodding in satisfaction at the sight of the apartment building's residents streaming out of the front door and away, more civilians moving out of the other buildings along the block and soldiers, uniformed and with sidearms if lacking their clamshells and rifles, now placed along the street directing them away from the battle and preventing a panic — the same scene would be repeated all around the park, the evacuation was well in hand. By the time heaven's little fistful of death and destruction might be needed again, the innocents should be out of the line of fire.

Behind her, the long-familiar cacophony of battle broke out, and she turned again and returned to watch as the Amazons hammered into the Confederate lines, swept around to take them in the rear, charged through to race toward the center of the park and the portal there. Any time, now ... and she winced as the ear-piercing, thought-obliterating shriek of a shattering crystal column exploded across the battlefield, momentarily ending all combat as enemies staggered apart, dropped weapons, grabbed at ears, even collapsed in some cases.

Now, if the Confederate tribune hadn't been as shaken as he could have been....

As the combatants recovered, the two centuries closest to where the Amazons had been hammering the wings started to swing like doors, sweeping back to take their enemies in the rear, but the Amazon battle leaders had been warned about that possibility and the swings stopped as the Amazons heading for the portal split, each half turning to take the centuries in the rear.

So, one century mostly gone, its remnants and another four engaged, that leaves three, and ... And they were moving away from where they'd been part of the perimeter, two forming up to stage assaults on the portal and the Senshi and Nerimans already surrounding the next column, counterclockwise away from the unengaged centuries and closer to the Amazon/legionnaire scrum in the western half of the park. Time to go.

/oOo\

“Good morning, Colonel, gentlemen.”

Colonel Okuda and his staff whipped around away from the large table in the middle of the tent at the feminine voice behind them to find they'd been graced by the stately (if somewhat skimpily clad, not that the men minded) presence of Sailor Pluto. The colonel quirked an eyebrow at the newcomer as several of his officers let their hands fall away from the buttoned flaps of the holsters at their waists. “It seems Sailor Moon was right to warn me if you,” he said with a wry chuckle.

“I'm sure I have no idea what you are talking about,” Pluto replied haughtily, the severity of her expression belied by the twinkle in her eye.

“Of course,” he agreed. “It is time?”

“It is,” she replied, sobering. Stepping up beside the colonel as his subordinates made room, she oriented herself on the map of the park on the table and quickly traced the locations of both friendly and enemy forces, explaining each as she went.

When she finished, Colonel Okuda gazed at the map for a moment, frowning thoughtfully, before finally nodding. “Captain Imai, we'll go with Zulu Three. Pass the word.”

“Yes, sir,” one of his aides acknowledged, saluted, and strode from the room.

“And now that that's done, if you'll excuse me I'll rejoin my friends,” Pluto said. “I'll see you on the battlefield.” Colonel Okuda nodded in acknowledgment, and she stepped away.

/oOo\

Vanguard found herself gasping for breath as she rode down the body of her latest victim, crouching with her feet on the shoulders of the now headless corpse and trying her best to ignore the way arterial blood had splashed against the insides of her legs as she thrust her lifesword toward the snarling face of the soldier now ahead of her. The snarl slid away as the sword pierced an eye, sliced through the brain, and punctured the back of the helmet.

Hopping back as her ride thumped onto the floor with a soggy splash, she spun in place on the back of the armor of another corpse, blood-soggy blue skirt sticking to her legs, her red-booted foot slamming into the back of the shield of the soldier that had been to the left of her last target. The soldier staggered as his shield was knocked wide, his attempted thrust with his shortsword late and skewed off-target, and she dove forward, sword and shield vanishing to be replaced by energy spikes protruding forward from her clenched fists. Those fists blurred into amaguriken speed, lightly tapping against muscle-shaped armor of chest and abdomen as the spikes drove deep, and as fresh blood spattered across her face and trickled down the translucent energy visor covering her eyes she thought distantly that losing her last fight because of getting splashed by acid was turning out to be a good thing.

Looking up as she recoiled from her strike, shield and lifesword flickering back into existence, she froze for a split-second at the sight of the next two soldiers in line stepping through a faintly shining gray wall cutting off the end of the tunnel — she'd fought her way all the way to the entrance at the Confederacy end of the tunnel!

The soldier on her left, eyes wide in shock, started to shift his shield to bring it from his side across his body, reaching across for his sheathed sword, and Vanguard's sword sliced into his arm just above the elbow, through bone and tendon, and as it dropped she spun to slam a booted foot into the shield of his companion just as it covered its owner's chest. The kicked soldier staggered back and vanished through the gray circle he had just walked through even as Vanguard turned back to her first target, lifesword cleanly sweeping his head from his shoulders.

Stepping aside to avoid the fresh gout of blood and collapsing body of her last victim, she crouched on one of the previous pair, waiting ... no one. Straightening slightly, she sucked in deep breaths between spits to try and clear the taste of blood out of her mouth, reflecting that for once since Jusenkyo, the lack of height of her female form was actually an advantage — it meant that even with the floor of the tunnel littered with bodies, she only needed to crouch a little to avoid hitting her head on the ceiling.

Okay, Ranma, time ta start thinkin' again. They know you're here, so what're they gonna do about it? Thinking back to the battle stories that MacKenzie-sensei had told during their training breaks, the only thing that she could think of offhand was for them to toss in grenades of some sort if they had them, if the field that interfered with high level kinetic force didn't cover the inside of the tunnel, followed by a rush. Still, she had her shield, so if she crouched, she could hide behind it, keep shrapnel away from anything vital....

After this is all over, you're gonna hafta practice with different shield shapes. Funny, how ya missed that when you were playing with different weapons. Later, let's get moved back ta where ya first hit `em — it'll take `em awhile ta catch up, the way they're gonna hafta walk hunched over `cause a' the bodies. With a little luck, maybe Big Sis an' the other Senshi'll be done before they catch up ta me.

Mind made up, Vanguard carefully backed up the way she'd come. Please, let this be over soon!

/\

Legate Aulus Verres Aviola stood with his staff waiting patiently behind him on the podium from which he'd signaled the beginning of the Confederacy's latest conquest. The watching crowd had grown quiet and was beginning to shrink as the initial excitement faded and people headed home to their beds, but proper decorum required that he wait patiently as his troops moved through, to take his place at the end of the line when the last had passed him.

As he watched the two-man column of legionnaires steadily march forward through the portal, he dreamed of the glory to be his, and the political power that would come with it. The competition to be the legate in command of the first legion into the new frontier had been fierce, for centuries the prestige that position carried had been a clear sign of a family with serious influence. But his family's decades of political maneuvering had finally paid off, and now that their day had come —

He jerked, ripped from his reveries by an alarm on the control panel briefly sounding. Glancing down, he stiffened, feeling a sinking sensation in his gut at the sight of the stud that had been blinking for his attention for almost a minute. Pressing the stud, he came to attention as the image of his commander, Consul Lucius Horatius Ligus appeared over his board. “Consul!” Verres barked, saluting.

“Legate,” his superior acknowledged. “Have you been observing your repeater display from the beachhead?”

“Ah, no, Sir. I've been momentarily occupied with a matter here.” His eyes shifted to the display, and he froze in shock at the sight of the pitched battle it reported. “By all that's holy!”

“Indeed. And you will note that not only is Tribune Manilius Otho's cohort heavily engaged, not only has the enemy succeeded in temporarily breaking down two of the support columns and is working on a third, but they have guards across the portal exit. If they have guards there, they will have them within the portal, as well. And with the way the portal entrance cuts off all sound and signals, we have no way of knowing what's happening inside.”

“Yes, Sir. I'll stop the advance immediately and send someone in to report back on the status of —”

A shout from the portal interrupted him, and he looked up and gaped as a legionnaire staggered back out of the portal and into the man behind him. In an instant, the chain reaction caused by the collision flashed down the line, spilling legionnaires onto the cobblestoned road.

Shaking himself out of his shock, he shifted gaze back to his superior. “Sir, it seems we already have a partial report. With your permission, I'll sort out what's happening, send in a probe, and report back to you.”

“Very well,” Horatius agreed, and his image vanished.

Verres turned to his staff. “Which of you reviewed the contingency plans for this?” he asked.

The staff exchanged glances, but no one stepped forward.

“No one? I imagine that means that if they call for any extra equipment we don't have that on hand, either. We will discuss the dimensions of proper staff work later, but first let's get this mess cleared up. Manius Publilius, get down there and find out what happened from the legionnaire that was knocked back out. Helvius Quintus, Norbanus Felix, Valerius Megellus, get down there and have the crowd cleared out enough that we can set up formations other than that column down Liberator's Road. Mamercus Caecilius, look up the files for the contingency plans and find out what we need and don't have, pass out assignments to acquire it as needed.”

The staff saluted and scattered, and Verres turned back to look out at the confusion slowly being sorted out by the centurions in what room they had, then down at his repeater display in time to see a third column destroyed. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. We've grown arrogant, careless, he thought grimly. I just hope it doesn't end up costing my family too much when the powers that be start looking for someone to blame. Looking over to the portal, his eyes widened at the sight of runnels of blood beginning to ooze out of the gray entrance to the transdimensional tunnel and run along the lower gaps around the cobblestones, and he fought back a wince — well over two score legionnaires had passed through the portal and apparently weren't coming back out on their own two feet, and wouldn't that make getting troops through the tunnel interesting? Whatever they did about whoever was standing in their way, they'd have to get the bodies out of the tunnel before they could relieve Manilius Otho's cohort ... what was left of it. More than it already has.

/oOo\

Centurion Decimus Sulpicius Pennus, First Spear of the Twentieth Legion, frowned as he watched in his HUD as the last of his men fell into the north/south rectangular block on the far eastern side of the battlefield. The other two unengaged cohorts between his and the fighting were almost finished falling into formation as well, and if Manilius saw the same thing he did, right about now —

A symbol flashed in an upper corner of his HUD, signaling that the tribune was calling in. “First Spear,” Manilius said formally, “Third and Seventh Centuries will be advancing, and you will be acting as a reserve and rear guard. I want you to thin out your line to twice its current length and refuse both ends, facing the edge of the park.”

A diagram of the order position appeared, overlaying the century's current position, and Sulpicius nodded as he forwarded the new layout on to his noncoms, with the added instruction to make it double-quick. “I take it you are expecting company?”

“And you aren't?” Manilius replied rhetorically. “Those women have proven better warriors than I ever thought normal women could, and thanks to the way they broke up our formation they'll finish off five centuries as effective units. But by that point they'll be spent, those that are alive and unwounded will be exhausted, and we still have three fresh cohorts unengaged. It could be they just brought what they could and hoped for the best, but considering how much they somehow knew about our plans, not likely.”

Sulpicius smiled to himself. Whatever else he had done with his life, he'd trained this man — he could seek out his ancestors in heaven happy for just that. “Agreed, and —”

He broke off as a rash of new threat symbols appeared on his HUD, spilling around the buildings that edged the park. Splitting the screen, he brought up a vidcam and nodded, unsurprised at what it revealed: more combatants, male soldiers this time rather than female warriors — dressed in uniforms of the mixed, dull colors of men that had to spend much of their time in the dirt; clamshell armor covering their torsos and metal helmets; carrying what would usually be bayoneted rifles of some sort but here and now were clumsy spears. “You take care of the rest of the cohort, Sir, I have your back,” Sulpicius said.

“I never doubted it. God bless, Sulpicius.”

“And you, Manilius.” The frequency went dead, and Sulpicius, First Spear of the Twentieth Legion, strode forward to join his men as the new enemy firmed up its formation and charged.

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I cannot believe that I actually originally thought I could fit the full final battle into one chapter. Of course, this one didn't get as far as I expected because the invaders' viewpoints unexpectedly expanded....

And yes, the title is a play on “March of Cambreath.” If you haven't heard it before, check it out on Youtube (even if the coolest amateur music videos have been removed, probably because of copyright violations).