"Setbacks happen. But if we stick to the plan, the Avatar isn't going anywhere. And worst case, he won't be all that dangerous anyway. Even he can't stand alone against the entire world."
"Fine." I wouldn't say the girl had completely calmed down and returned to her usual sunny disposition, but at least we'd managed to avoid any urges to "burn everything that moves." Which meant we really could head back.
Along the way, we gathered up the rest of our team and gave Toph the signal that she could stop holding up the canopy. The girl grumbled for a while that if we hadn't been screwing around with this drill and had just let her tear down the wall, everything would've been much easier and faster, but she still let out a surreptitious sigh of relief.
The Blind Bandit might be awesome, but she'd had to build herself a pretty substantial cliff in a matter of seconds and then hold it together under the furious barrage of several squads of earthbenders attacking from way up high. And that hadn't been easy even for her. But how could she possibly admit something like that? That would mean showing weakness! Toph did not approve of such things!
The rest of us understood what was really going on but unanimously pretended we hadn't noticed a thing. After that, we returned to the command cabin, got some tea going, and set about recovering our composure and preparing ourselves mentally for the assault. We obviously wouldn't be going in with the first wave—the tanks would—but still. For now, though, we drank tea. And let the drill keep moving forward...
***
We broke through the wall three hours later. That might sound like a long time (especially considering the wonder machine had already "latched onto" the wall by the time Aang paid us his visit), but what could we do? The earthbenders had clearly gone into a panic and started "barricading" themselves in with everything they had. So not only was the wall itself extremely dense, but the enemy benders had also piled in en masse to reinforce and rebuild the section we were drilling through. At least, that was what Toph told us, and we had no reason not to trust her. Besides, it made perfect sense.
The earthbenders also kept hurling rocks at the drill and even managed to dent its outer armor slightly with the constant pounding, but that was as far as their success went, while we slowly but inexorably gnawed our way through the wall. And then, after those three hours, the wall went crack, and our mega-jackhammer surged forward much more cheerfully and quickly: the final barrier had fallen.
"Jettison the drill head!" General Chin gave the order. The hull shuddered as the hydraulics engaged. "First Company! Move out!"
We couldn't actually see what was happening—Chin was giving orders through a PA system like the ones installed aboard our cruisers, and there was no proper view from our cabin, nor could there have been. The only thing resembling a makeshift periscope was, again, located by the general and his adjutants rather than by the command throne. But we didn't really need to see anything. It was obvious enough that the flamethrower tanks were about to roll out of the "steel tunnel" and give the earthbenders something to laugh about.
I can't say I relished the sight of people burning alive or the smell of scorched flesh, but the realization that this supposedly impregnable stronghold was finally giving way stirred something resembling inspiration and exhilaration in my chest.
"Situation?" the princess demanded a report about forty minutes after the deployment began.
"The enemy is offering no resistance and is retreating, my lady. A few more hours, and we'll have secured a bridgehead and be able to begin a full-scale deployment!" the general reported.
That was another perfectly sound and logical move. The drill might have given us a breach the size of a subway tunnel, perhaps even a little wider, but we weren't storming some chicken coop here. This was the largest city not merely on the continent, but in the entire world. Without properly deploying behind the enemy's defensive line, they'd simply bury us under bodies and force us right back out.
Personally, if I were in the dirt-diggers' shoes, I'd already have assigned a couple hundred benders to fashion a plug of the appropriate size, then, under cover of their "stone turtles" (essentially "Chinese knockoffs" of our tanks, built with earthbending and cargo cult), hammer said plug straight into the tunnel.
Preventing that meant we essentially had to establish another siege camp, only this time inside the walls. In the meantime, we could urgently move in the breakthrough forces stationed in the first camp. A report confirming the successful breach had also already gone out, so the rest of our forces along the entire front were now, on the one hand, conducting "harassing bombardments" to keep the dirt-diggers from throwing everything they had at sealing the breach and, on the other, sending reinforcements our way to exploit our success.
The next twenty-four hours, in fact, were spent tensely carrying out these seemingly simple but utterly exhausting tasks. Fire Nation regiments poured through the breach one after another, hurrying to expand the bridgehead we had seized. Tank crews and komodo rhino riders were literally dead on their feet with exhaustion, yet time and again they operated at the spearhead of the forces storming the city, sweeping around retreating Earth Kingdom troops, seizing bridges, isolating pockets of resistance in settlements until the infantry could catch up, and so on.
Ba Sing Se alone was comparable in size to half the Fire Nation Archipelago, and unlike the islands, the city sprawled across a plain rather than among mountains, so even the expanse between the outer wall and the next one was vast enough to require hours-long troop marches.
(End of Chapter)
🙌Bonus chapter for 200 power stones!
🔥The next bonus chapter will be for 200 power stones.