Sophia stood in air choked with pale yellow dust, wearing a fully enclosed gas mask and issuing orders over the in-ear comms to the formation behind her. They were no more than two kilometers from the city's outskirts; the blast shockwaves could still be felt here. This was territory controlled by the Latovinian resistance; any farther forward lay the royal army's ground, and inside were plenty of royal guards still fighting to the last.
Two hundred Exemptors—an elite detachment in black fully sealed ballistic shells, carrying high-powered laser rifles, plasma rifles, and various types of individual heavy weapons—stood in perfect order in front of light tracked APCs, ready to mount up at a moment's notice. Behind them stretched trucks, every vehicle painted with the black field and red lightning insignia of the Special Military Operations and the Exemptors. Shells and rockets kept streaking overhead, pounding anti-armor firing points inside the city that recon drones had marked. Their mission was to push into the royal city under that rain of rockets and shells, guide the troop carriers behind them to evacuate civilians out beyond the walls, and, before the resistance entered the city proper, eliminate firepoints that had slipped past the drones. That took enormous courage; not everyone could keep a straight face with impact bursts going off close enough to touch, and no amount of high-tech composite ballistic armor could arm the heart. But the Exemptors were the elite of the elite—they were equal to the task, and only needed the order.
Gravel and dust on the ground were shoved aside by air expanding in an instant. The ozone stink of ionization was quickly scoured away by the shockwaves and gale from the chain of explosions not far off, and pebbly fragments rattled against the Exemptors' composite plate. Hearing the sound, Sophia instinctively checked her timer, then snapped for everyone to stand at attention and await review—two giants in gold power armor came out of the sonic-boom haze. The one in front wore no helmet, and a golden glow seeped from his eyes.
The moment everyone saw him, a nameless courage surged up from the heart, as if whatever lay ahead—battlefield or hell—they would march into it with heads held high. No explanation was needed; the soldiers knew who he was. The Exemptors watched their lord lower his head to say something to the commissar, then turn and leave. But the gold-armored giant with the long halberd stayed, standing at Sophia's side.
Sophia gave a calm nod and turned to order the troops into the carriers. The blasts drowned her voice and the gas mask muffled it, but through encrypted comms it still reached Solomon. Strictly speaking, the Exemptors shouldn't have been under her command; she was a military discipline officer. But the captain in charge had been wounded by an IED in an operation and was now in a field hospital. This trained unit had readied to move in no time. Three main battle tank battlegroups behind them rolled past the APCs to the fore and took over for the heavy mortars in suppressing firepoints on the city's outer ring.
"Hammurabi, are you ready?" Sophia asked before boarding.
The Honor Guard straddled his antigrav jet bike and nodded. "I'll support you on the mission," he said. "But my primary task is to protect you. You have a place in my lord's plan."
Meanwhile, ten kilometers out from the city, the Latovinian resistance's mechanized infantry was tightening straps. The Undying City's soldiers stood with them, all of them linked by the bronze eagle on their armor. Victor von Doom stood before the tanks and armor in silence until a golden giant appeared out of thin air in front of the army; like a statue come to life, he saluted the man. The troops broke into cheers, and a golden courage spread through them like morning mist.
"We're ready," Victor von Doom said. "For unification."
"According to frontline reports, around seven o'clock this morning the Latovinian resistance launched sustained shelling and bombing against the Latovinian royal family's forces. We're seeing a lot of unusual equipment here, and we still don't know how the resistance obtained these weapons. Outside intervention can't be ruled out. Perhaps the Latovinian resistance isn't what we imagined…"
Dozens of TV screens showed the same feed, with different languages telling the same story. In the footage, self-propelled guns fired continuously, but the missile launchers had gone oddly quiet, even pulling back. War correspondents from all over the world were gathered in this area away from the fighting, guarded by soldiers in dark green ballistic shells. No one dared cross the lines the army had marked. More than a few had been grabbed by recon teams and dumped here; more than a few "war correspondents" had been dragged off and executed. The ones left had passed an identity check and were only permitted to capture fuzzy images of the last battle of the Latovinian civil war from here.
They all knew the executed had been spies, but they couldn't understand how the resistance had confirmed identities so quickly, nor why the resistance didn't publish those identities to trade for moral advantage in international opinion. If Victor von Doom had heard them, his answer would have been this: the world is about to be run under a new order; the old order holds no meaning for Latovinia.
In a world ruled by greed, the weak suffer. The limitless hunger of unrestrained capital must be brought to heel. Those with power shirk responsibility and treat it as a lever to feed their greed; the worthless offspring of the few are born owning what others cannot earn in a lifetime. In the world to come there will be no senseless internal friction; the corruption parasitizing human society must be purged, corrected by the hardest measures and the harshest judgment. The concept of nation will be shattered; everyone will have only one identity: human. Each person will be rewarded for their effort; all humankind must unite to stride into the stars and realize their greatest value. There is nothing that cannot be sacrificed for the continuation of the human race. There will be no so-called alliances and no United Nations—that only breeds endless buck-passing and division. The world to come will be run by one cold but efficient system: a government with incomparable executive power; a noose to destroy neoliberal capitalism; a sword devoted to eradicating all poverty and inequality; a scarred giant staggering to its feet, waving a war banner toward the galaxy and fighting for living space for the human species.
The Unified Truth was handed to every war correspondent. In it they saw a terrifying resolve: an ideal fated to be the enemy of the entire world—and also the absurd bragging of a tiny agrarian nation, the babble of a madman who didn't know what he was saying. But soon no one would dare look down on the Latovinian resistance, because in ten minutes these correspondents would be shipped up to the Tianjian Space Station, and everyone on Earth would see the high technology the new Latovinian government possessed—provided Western media were willing to release that footage instead of deceiving themselves and hiding it. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs' estimate, the latter was more likely. The military-industrial complex and NATO would not miss this chance to expand influence and make money.
"All right, time to get on the plane, you lot of spies." The soldier guarding the press spat on the ground. He was a trooper given extra training by the Undying City's intelligence service, assigned to support intel work at the front—yanking out spies and helping recon intercept MI6 and CIA operatives. "Bring all your gear. No dawdling. Don't film without permission. Dropping bodies from high altitude is a pain in the ass."
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